Error 'Malformed 3rd word on Status line' whilst updating

[Alex Willmer]

Binary package hint: update-manager

Performed an update using Update Manager on 16 Aug 2007 at 22:20 GMT. Received following error:
Could not initialise the package information

An unresolvable problem occurred while initialising the package information.

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

'E:Malformed 3rd word in the Status line, E:Error occurred while processing initramfs-tools (UsePackage2), E:Problem with MergeList /var/lib/dpkg/status, E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.'

Unsure if this is a data problem with my system, or general problem, reporting as requested by message.

[Alex Willmer (alex-moreati)]

From /var/lib/dpkg/status:

Package: initramfs-tools
Status: install ok triggers-pending
Priority: optional
Section: utils
Installed-Size: 372
Maintainer: Ubuntu Kernel Team <email address hidden>
Architecture: all
Version: 0.85eubuntu17
Provides: linux-initramfs-tool
Depends: klibc-utils (>= 1.4.19-2), busybox-initramfs, cpio, module-init-tools, udev (>= 0.086-1), volumeid
Conffiles:
 /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf 296b675c518585686980060dc68e300f
 /etc/initramfs-tools/update-initramfs.conf 47add5605b5fe94675f6b13df3a3e7e4
Description: tools for generating an initramfs
 This package contains tools to create and boot an initramfs for packaged 2.6
 Linux kernel. The initramfs is a gzipped cpio archive. At boot time, the
 kernel unpacks that archive into RAM, mounts and uses it as initial root file
 system. The mounting of the real root file system occurs in early user space.
 klibc provides utilities to setup root. Having the root on EVMS, MD, LVM2,
 LUKS or NFS is also supported.
 Any boot loader with initrd support is able to load an initramfs archive.
Triggers-Pending: update-initramfs
Original-Maintainer: Debian kernel team <email address hidden>

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Thanks in advance.

[pas99 (pstevens99)]

Hi,

No longer an issue. I did fix this one.. I can't remember how. It think I replaced the sources file and ran an apt-get upgrade then an apt-get update..

Cheers, Paul.

> From: <email address hidden>> To: <email address hidden>> Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2008 19:38:44 +0000> Subject: [Bug 133050] Re: Error 'Malformed 3rd word on Status line' whilst updating Gutsy on ia64> > Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make> Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been> any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue> for you? Thanks in advance.> > ** Changed in: update-manager (Ubuntu)> Status: New => Incomplete> > -- > Error 'Malformed 3rd word on Status line' whilst updating Gutsy on ia64> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/133050> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber> of a duplicate bug.
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[Richard Birnie (rbirnie-deactivatedaccount)]

Most recent comment states the problem no longer occurs. Feel free to re-open if this is still a problem

[Johann Petrak (johann-petrak)]

This just happened out of the blue on my system (Ubuntu 10.10 on a 32 bit x86 computer).
Whatever the reason is, the way how this error is handled seems to prevent any use of the graphical programs that are package related: synaptic terminates after showing the error message and the update manager shows a dialog with the error "Could not initialise the package information" "An unresolvable problem occurred while initialising the package information. Please report this bug for the update-manager package and try to include the following error message:" "E:Malformed 3rd word in the Status line, E:Error occurred while processing libboost-program-options1.40.0 (UsePackage2) E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/dpkg/status, E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened."

The first bug here is that the actual line where this problem occurs is not included in the error message.
Doing "sudo dpkg --configure -a" can be used to figure this out -- this command shows: "dpkg: parse error, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 96097 package 'libboost-program-options1.40.0':
 `config-fines' is not allowed for third (status) word in `status' field"

So for some reason the file contains "config-fines" and not config-files. I edited this with "sudo vi".

However, whatever caused this problem, the user should not end up with a state where both synaptic and the package manager are unusable and severe command line hacking has to be used to get out of this. Something much more user-friendly has to be done here.

[Robert Roth (evfool)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug #108601, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.
---
Ubuntu Bug Squad volunteer triager
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

[isdl (isdl)]

E:Malformed 3rd word in the Status line, E:Error occurred while processing distro-info-data (UsePackage2), E:Problem with MergeList /var/lib/dpkg/status, E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

... same thing happened on my new ubuntu 16.04 installation. Just a couple of days after fresh installation, this error came out from nowwhere, Now, it's impossible to update. Anybody found a permanent fix yet? Thanks.

[isdl (isdl)]

well, ok here's what I did that cleared the problem, somehow:
In /var/lib/dpkg, I simply renamed "status" into "status.1", and then renamed "status-old" into "status". (Didn't want to lose any file, and tried to avoid any editing). Somehow it cleared the problem, and now I can update cleanly again.