Update manager fails - "Encountered a section with no Package: header" [Problem and fix]

[Rascal999]

Binary package hint: update-manager

Some users find themselves unable to update/run the package manager with one of the following errors:

Encountered a section with no Package: header
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

This can occur when the update manager attempts to download package lists, but receives a HTML document from their gateway.

If the package manager could determine the format of the package lists, making sure it's not a HTML file, before trying to parse it, the manager could rectify or, at least, inform the user that it is unable to update/download because it is having trouble downloading the package lists.

In order to resolve this issue, I removed all files under /var/lib/apt/lists and ran 'sudo apt-get update', perhaps the package manager could automate this process?

Thanks Ubuntu Team! :)

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: update-manager 1:0.111.9
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: update-manager
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-13-generic i686