E:Encountered a section with no Package: header, E:Problem with MergeList

[Chanchao]

This happens when I forget to open a web browser first to log into my company's Barracuda web filter. As a result, update-manager cannot reach (some?) of the repositories.

All of that would be expected behavior, except that it causes a permanent problem in the update mechanism; after gaining full internet access, the update manager still stops with the same error (attached).

I do know how to solve it, it involves running the following commands:

sudo apt-get clean
cd /var/lib/apt
sudo rm -r lists.old
sudo mv lists lists.old
sudo mkdir -p lists/partial
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update

This took quite a while to figure out, I think update-manager should handle it better when there is no unrestricted internet connection to (some) repositories.

This affects all currenlty supported Ubuntu releases; currently I'm on Precise.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Reviewing your bug report it seems that you are experiencing bug 346386. This issue happens when you have tried to update your package information when you are a network that didn't return the right files. This issue can be cleaned up by using the following commands in a terminal:

1.) sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/*
2.) sudo apt-get update

Thanks and good luck!

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please reopen the bug task if it was incorrect.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.