[Bug 898758] Re: update-manager crashes; problem with merge list

[Eric Ongerth]

Tim, thank you very much for the suggestion.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/898758

Title:
  update-manager crashes; problem with merge list

Status in “update-manager” package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  UPDATE: Possibly still a bug, but this resolved itself over two days.
  1 day after this report, and after a reboot or two, the system was
  still in an imperfect state -- if I ran Update Manager or tried "apt-
  get update" from a shell, these programs would begin and then quit
  with no message.  Update Manager would create its window and then
  disappear and close itself, leaving no process running.  apt-get would
  just terminate quickly with nothing printed to the terminal window
  (although curiously the cursor would backspace over my prompt).  2
  days after the report was filed (i.e., today) the system runs normally
  and the error has not recurred.  I can run update manager and apt-get
  as normal.

  So this still seems like some kind of bug: the system was able to get
  itself into a state where I both was unable to run update-manager or
  apt-get update, an error icon was shown in the bar at the top right of
  the screen, and the ordinary bug-reporting tool did not work with the
  update-manager crash window (it seemed unable to identify the update-
  manager package as update-manager).  But, since it resolved itself, I
  withdraw my interest in this item.  Thanks.

  ORIGINAL REPORT:
  I'm fairly close to a noob on this, so I'm just reporting exactly what the error window says:

  <quote>
  Could not initialize the package information

  An unresolvable problem occurred while initializing the package
  information.

  Please report this bug against the 'update-manager' package and
  include the following error message:

  'E:Encountered a section with no Package: header, E:Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric_universe_binary-i386_Packages, E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.'
  </quote>

  So I'm stuck with a system that cannot update itself.  Running the
  command "sudo apt-get update" from the terminal causes the following
  error:

  <quote>
  Reading package lists... Error!
  E: Encountered a section with no Package: header
  E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric_universe_binary-i386_Packages
  E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
  </quote>

  Should I wait for a bug fix, or should I completely reinstall Ubuntu?

  This is a system where the initial install was 11.04 and then I
  allowed the upgrade to 11.10.  That was a month ago and it has been
  running OK until this error that first occurred today.  The only
  recent activity that I imagine might be connected to this is, I
  recently ran the "Janitor" utility to try to improve boot and shutdown
  performance.  It did result in an improvement.  That is the first time
  I've ever run that utility.  I ran it two or three times until it
  found nothing else to remove.  That was several days ago, and the
  system worked OK since then, but maybe there was already a problem
  with update-manager after I ran the Janitor util.

  Attached is the contents of /var/log/dist-upgrade in a single file, "bugfiles" which was created with:
  tar -cvz --file bugfiles /var/log/dist-upgrade/*

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