update manager failing to launch

[Tony ImBoden]

Binary package hint: update-manager

This is during regular update of Ubuntu 8.10. Prior, system had locked up, and became totally unresponsive (no response from mouse, keyboard, ctrl+alt+del, any key combo I could think of)

Now when trying to launch update manager getting the following.

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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/dpkg/status, E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.'
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As I am new to Ubuntu, not sure where to take this from here.

[Tony ImBoden (tony-imboden)]

I just tried opening Synaptic, got this error
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E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.
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running the command listed results in the following
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name@ubuntu:~$ sudo dpkg --configure -a
[sudo] password for name:
dpkg: parse error, in file `/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 31249:
 EOF after field name `'
name@ubuntu:~$
--------------------

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreport.

Could you please attach the file /var/lib/dpkg/status ?

[Tony ImBoden (tony-imboden)]

Attached. Hope it opens for you. any problems, I'll attach the original. I resaved the file as a .txt file.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

There is some invalid data in that file:

Homepage: http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnome-power-manager/
Original-Maintainer: Debian GNOME Maintainers <email address hidden>

^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@

This is often causes by a hardware problem (RAM or harddisk). Could you please run a memory check and a harddisk check?