Update manager failed

[Daryl Lee]

Upon launching update manager, I get an alert requesting I report a bug against update manager with this text:

E:Encountered a section with no Package: header, E:Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_lucid-updates_universe_binary-i386_Packages, E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

I cannot proceed after the alert; when I dismiss the alert, Update Manager terminates. Therefore update manager is utterly broken for me.

Since it is broken, I tried a couple of things to fix it. I removed the file named above, but got a similar error with another filename.

Additional information. Last evening I started an upgrade from 10.04.3 LTS to 10.10, but the downloads were very slow and when my network connection failed, I did not complete the process, resolving to resume it again this evening. This morning when I restarted my computer, the disk check was invoked and some errors fixed. Perhaps these are related events. Since my intent is to upgrade to 11.04 (via 10.10), I am abandoning this approach in favor of a fresh install from disk.

System: 10.04.3 LTS
Package: update-manager

[Daryl Lee (daryl-daryllee)]

Recovered from problem by "sudo apt-get update". For my purposes, this can be closed. However, it might be worthwhile to fix the problem by suggesting that solution to the victim.