update manager crashes on opening

[josh duke]

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/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_natty_main_binary-i386_Packages, E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.'

[RedSingularity (redsingularity)]

Run this command and see if it clears up the problem:

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_natty_main_binary-i386_Packages

[josh duke (joshduke)]

You mean just open the terminal and type that exact character string in, then press enter, correct? I did that and it didn't seem to do much. I then tried to open the update manager, and this time got the following error message (similar but slightly different from the first one; "restricted" vs "main"):

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

[RedSingularity (redsingularity)]

Yes you are correct, copy and paste it into the terminal. Run this now:

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/*
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[josh duke (joshduke)]

Did that, and got the following:

rm: cannot remove `/var/lib/apt/lists/partial': Is a directory

Sorry, my command line abilities are pretty rusty, not that they were ever all that great, and they're based only in DOS and UNIX to begin with, haha.

[RedSingularity (redsingularity)]

Thats right there is a directory in there. My mistake. Do this then:

sudo rm -r /var/lib/apt/lists/*

Then:

sudo mkdir /var/lib/apt/lists/partial

The try the update-manager again.
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[josh duke (joshduke)]

You are a genius. Now we're getting somewhere. That seemed to fix it; I installed all of the updates (there were a TON of them).

Now, however, the update manager doesn't offer me the update to Ocelot. Am I missing something simple? I've checked for updates several times and restarted the computer; no luck.

[RedSingularity (redsingularity)]

1) Run: sudo software-properties-gtk

2) Go to the 'updates' tab.

3) Look for 'Release Upgrade' at the bottom and make sure its set to 'Normal Releases'.

Then try again.
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[josh duke (joshduke)]

Yep, had actually already checked that. Tried it again to make sure...still no luck.

[RedSingularity (redsingularity)]

Run:

gksu update-manager -c

See if that does it.
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[josh duke (joshduke)]

That spat out a lot of options in the command line terminal. I didn't change any of them and just closed the terminal after running the line you gave me.

When I ran the Update Manager and hit "check", I thought we had it at first. It showed a progress bar and said "loading software list", then "downloading release". It still never gave the option for upgrading to 11.10, though.

[josh duke (joshduke)]

By the way, after 6 months of miserable stumbling around with Unity, I finally realized that I can select "Ubuntu Classic" on startup and make everything right again, haha.

I've been wanting 11.10 to see if it made Unity any more tolerable. If I still don't like it, does the new version have the option of running the "normal" interface?

[RedSingularity (redsingularity)]

Nope. In 10.10, unity 3d and 2d are the only available desktop environments. Gnome classic is out. You will need to use a custom sources.list entry to use the classic desktop.

What is the output of: lsb_release -rcd
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[RedSingularity (redsingularity)]

Correction above: 11.10 not 10.10

[RedSingularity (redsingularity)]

Also, post the output of:

cat /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades

[josh duke (joshduke)]

To your first query:

Description: Ubuntu 11.04
Release: 11.04
Codename: natty

To the second:

# Default behavior for the release upgrader.

[DEFAULT]
# Default prompting behavior, valid options:
#
# never - Never check for a new release.
# normal - Check to see if a new release is available. If more than one new
# release is found, the release upgrader will attempt to upgrade to
# the release that immediately succeeds the currently-running
# release.
# lts - Check to see if a new LTS release is available. The upgrader
# will attempt to upgrade to the first LTS release available after
# the currently-running one. Note that this option should not be
# used if the currently-running release is not itself an LTS
# release, since in that case the upgrader won't be able to
# determine if a newer release is available.
Prompt=normal

[RedSingularity (redsingularity)]

You shouldn't need to do this, but try:

update-manager -d
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[josh duke (joshduke)]

Apparently I needed to do that, because that did it. 11.10 is installing right now.

Thanks a ton. What happened and what all did we do to fix it?

[RedSingularity (redsingularity)]

The -d option tells update-manager to check for the next Development Release. As you know, 11.10 is not in development anymore so you should not have to invoke that option. I am going to inquire about this.

I am also going to close this report since we got it figured out. Thanks for reporting it, and feel free to report any other bugs you may find.
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