E: Wow, you exceeded the number of descriptions this APT is capable of.

[Remi Meier]

Binary package hint: apt

Well, I have quite a list of package repositories listed in my sources.list. If I add one more, the following error message appears:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
E: Wow, you exceeded the number of descriptions this APT is capable of.
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.de.debian.org_debian_dists_sid_main_i18n_Translation-de
E: Die Paketliste oder die Statusdatei konnte nicht geparst oder geöffnet werden.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The last line could be translated as "The package list or the status file couldn't be parsed or opened."

After that, I can't use synaptic anymore to remove the repository. I have to do it manually...

System info:
Description: Ubuntu 8.04.1
Release: 8.04

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

Can you please provide your sources.list and any files in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/

[Remi Meier (remi-meier)]

In sources.list I just have to uncomment line 79 (deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian sid main) and the error shows up. If I remove other reps, line 79 wont be a problem anymore and it works as expected.

in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ there are only the two files named "playdeb.list" and "playdeb.list.save" with identical content:
deb mirror://www.getdeb.net/playdeb-mirror/hardy/// hardy/

[Jisakiel (jisakiel)]

This is definitely related to http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=400768 . Has been fixed upstream, I think (in fact, Lenny's apt is 0.7.18 ). Could be not trivial to backport though, as the fixes break apt's ABI according to upstream's bug report.

This should not be expired IMHO; I, for instance, used to track debian's repositories as well to install some packages only available there, or not yet "backported" to ubuntu such as virt-manager or openoffice-3.0 without having to trust some unknown PPA.

[Jisakiel (jisakiel)]

Just installing Lenny's apt over does not work, as it is linked to libc6 2.7 instead of 2.8whatever that intrepid uses, so it doesn't have the necessary files in /usr/lib (such as installing /usr/lib/libapt-pkg-libc6.7-6.so.1.1 instead of libc6.8 ) , regardless of ABI breakage. Pity :(

Latest apt and related apps should be backported IMHO, as this is a serious bug that bites anyone trying to track two distros at the same time (and using apt_preferences to avoid ruining the system while doing so).

[Mark (mark-wege)]

This bug affects me too. The problem appeared after I added the KDE 4.2 repositories to my list. This worked first, but after reboot the problem was there. What is funny: I have removed a larger part of my sources.list entried (commented them out), but the problem does not dispear. Any idea how to work around this? There is a suggested workaround using ALIAS, but unfortunately I do not have this command installed and I can not install something while this bugs blocking apt.

[Aitor Moreno (aitormoreno)]

The same happens here. Tryed to update from Kubuntu 8.04 to 8.10 and the upgrade tool crashed silently (after updating the apt sources.list file).
Synaptic crashes, obviously.
apt-get update crashes with the same "wow!.. " stuff . apt-cache stats returns the same error.

no results, after "cleaning" the sources.list (reducing the number of sources).

So, at this moment, my computer can not be upgraded.

[Aitor Moreno (aitormoreno)]

..Continuation..

After restoring the previous sources.list (autosaved sources.list.distUpgrade), the apt-get is working again.

Since it seems to be a limitation on the number of packages, would it be possible to upgrade by uninstalling some applications not required at this moment for me? Would it be better to update from the 8.10 CD? or at the end, the problem is more in the inners of apt

[Dimitrios Symeonidis (azimout)]

marking as confirmed, it seems it was forgotten in "incomplete" state

[Martin Schaaf (mascha)]

This happens to me by including the repos for the dbgsym packages and only with german language. With "LANG=C; sudo synaptic" it works.

[Trax (forum-traxbyte)]

I can confirm Martin's comment.

[Vladimir Hidalgo (vlad88sv)]

I had the same problem as Mark today.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/280660/comments/5

I added kubuntu-experimental PPA for KDE 4.2 and eventually this problem showed up :(

[Pavel Mlčoch (pavkamlc)]

I can confirm Martin's comment with czech lang, With "LANG=C" apt works...

[squiddle (ubuntu-l7010)]

i can confirm Martins comment with german language, LANG="C" helps to get it working

[Dimitrios Symeonidis (azimout)]

fixed in debian, marking as fix committed

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

The relevant APT release has been merged some time ago, closing.