kubuntu hardy beta upgrade malformed release file error

[dave]

Binary package hint: update-manager

when trying to upgrade from 7.10 to 8.4 beta get error at the modifying software channels stage. Get error that it cannot find the release

Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/hardy/Release Unable to find expected entry deb-src/binary-amd64/Packages in Meta-index file (malformed Release file?)

and so on.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Could you please add all the files contained in /var/log/dist-upgrade/ to your bug report as separate attachments? Thanks in advance.

[mike (arizonagroovejet)]

See also #213890,

I get the same problem when trying to update to 8.04 RC

Have attached the contents of my /var/log/dist-upgrade/ though looks I can only attach one file per comment

[mike (arizonagroovejet)]

There's a file /var/log/dist-upgrade/term.log too but it's zero length.

[crvampsh (crvampsh)]

I'm also getting this. It started the 8.04 final was released. I've tried using mirror sources but it didn't help. Here's what I'm getting with my mirrors:

W: Failed to fetch http://ubuntu.cs.utah.edu/ubuntu/dists/hardy/Release Unable to find expected entry web/binary-i386/Packages in Meta-index file (malformed Release file?)

W: Failed to fetch http://ubuntu.cs.utah.edu/ubuntu/dists/hardy-updates/Release Unable to find expected entry web/binary-i386/Packages in Meta-index file (malformed Release file?)

W: Failed to fetch http://is.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/hardy-security/Release Unable to find expected entry web/binary-i386/Packages in Meta-index file (malformed Release file?)

E: Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

@mike:
2008-04-19 16:19:36,601 ERROR IOError/SystemError in cache.update(): 'Failed to fetch http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/dists/hardy/Release Unable to find expected entry main/binary-i386/Packages in Meta-index file (malformed Release file?)

"main" component for archive.canonical.com, just "partner" please fix the sources.list file and try again

@crvampsh:
There is no "web" component in the ubuntu archive, please remove that from your sources.list file and the upgrade should work.

[Xoanan (water451)]

Hi There

I have a similar issue with Xubuntu and I want to make sure I understand the fix properly. When you say remove the "web" component in the ubuntu archive do you mean

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-security main restricted multiverse [b]web[/b]
deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-security restricted main multiverse universe #Added by software-properties
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy-security universe
deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu edgy-security universe
deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu hardy partner
deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ hardy free non-free
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ hardy-proposed restricted main multiverse universe [b]web[/b]

[Eric S. Raymond (esr-thyrsus)]

This error can be caused by a malformed /etc/apt/sources.list file. I've seen it in stock Ubuntu.

I think my instance may have got stepped on by some weird bug in the Python distribution upgrader; when I looked, the last group of lines duplicated a bunch of multiverse entries earlier in the file, and the last line ended with a single quote and the word "main" (rather obviously malformed).

I removed the malformed last line and the duplicative entries before it and re-ran the upgrade. Problem solved.

It is no wonder you were puzzled by Michael Vogt's reply: he should slap himself, hard. He pretty clearly had the right information, but his reply was about as unhelpful as it could possibly have been. This is a bug tracker, people come here for help; cryptic and elliptical and making lots of assumptions about what the user knows is not the right way to be.