Comment 5 for bug 382315

I had found this same problem today in karmic 9.10 for cron.daily I got it to work by editing the /etc/cron.daily/apt script by putting the word exit at the beginning of the script and problem gone. You can check the functioning of the cron.daily running by executing sudo run-parts -v /etc/cron.daily

I also have noticed that the regular root users crontab has a bug I get E23 no alternate file and it won't let me add anything there.

Here is the page I referenced for my solution https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-users/2009-February/175422.html