Comment 62 for bug 346386

I seem to be experiencing this issue also but "sudo rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists" doesn't seem to help (I think maybe it did during the first install but my memory of the magic spells the first time isn't that good at this point). We do have a firewall here that returns configuration instructions for the proxy script. This may go south even during the install because I configured the script as soon as the system came up and have spent the rest of the day trying to get around this issue with apt-get. This is Ubuntu 11.04 (a 2nd install due catastrophic hard drive failure last weekend).

hill@Taz:~$ ls /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
/var/lib/apt/lists/lock
hill@Taz:~$ sudo apt-get update
Ign http://us.archive.ubuntu.com natty InRelease
Ign http://us.archive.ubuntu.com natty-updates InRelease
Ign http://extras.ubuntu.com natty InRelease
Ign http://security.ubuntu.com natty-security InRelease
Ign http://us.archive.ubuntu.com natty Release.gpg
Ign http://extras.ubuntu.com natty Release.gpg
..

sudo rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists

hill@Taz:~$ sudo apt-get update
Ign http://us.archive.ubuntu.com natty InRelease
Ign http://security.ubuntu.com natty-security InRelease
Ign http://us.archive.ubuntu.com natty-updates InRelease
Ign http://security.ubuntu.com natty-security Release.gpg
Ign http://us.archive.ubuntu.com natty Release.gpg
Ign http://security.ubuntu.com natty-security Release
...

hill@Taz:~$ sudo fuser -vvv /var/lib/dpkg/lock
hill@Taz:~$ cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=11.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=natty
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 11.04"
hill@Taz:~$ uname -a
Linux dingy 2.6.38-8-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP Mon Apr 11 03:31:50 UTC 2011 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux
hill@Taz:~$ sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
hill@Taz:~$ sudo cp -arf /var/lib/dpkg /var/lib/dpkg.backup
hill@Taz:~$ sudo cp /var/lib/dpkg/status-old /var/lib/dpkg/status
hill@Taz:~$ sudo cp /var/lib/dpkg/available-old /var/lib/dpkg/available
hill@Taz:~$ sudo rm -rf /var/lib/dpkg/updates/*
hill@Taz:~$ sudo rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists
hill@Taz:~$ sudo rm /var/cache/apt/*.bin
hill@Taz:~$ sudo mkdir /var/lib/apt/lists
hill@Taz:~$ sudo mkdir /var/lib/apt/lists/partial
hill@Taz:~$ LANG=C;sudo apt-get clean
[sudo] password for hill:
hill@Taz:~$ LANG=C;sudo apt-get autoclean
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
hill@Taz:~$ LANG=C;sudo apt-get --purge autoremove
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
hill@Taz:~$ LANG=C;sudo apt-get update -o APT::Cache-Limit=25165824
Ign http://security.ubuntu.com natty-security InRelease
Ign http://us.archive.ubuntu.com natty InRelease
Ign http://us.archive.ubuntu.com natty-updates InRelease
...