OK to close -- see UPDATE at the top of original report above. ** Description changed:
- I'm fairly close to a noob on this, so I'm just reporting exactly what - the error window says: + 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/* -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/898758 Title: update-manager crashes; problem with merge list To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/+bug/898758/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
