Comment 4 for bug 463122

I'd expand scope on this to all files under /var/lib/apt/lists. I can reproduce this issue easily, in fact, it's been happening every day, here's how...

I have the Update Manager setting "Check for updates: Daily", which apparently tries to check for updates as soon as *it thinks* my machine has network access. Problem is that lately I've been connecting to a wireless LAN that immediately establishes a connection, but redirects all traffic to web authentication page (you know the kind? they're common in hotels, conferences, universities, etc). So, as soon as my laptop connects to this network, Update Manager happily updates all the files in /var/lib/app/lists, but the files all contain the html of the wireless LAN authentication page. Then apt, synaptic and update manager all fail miserably until I remove every file.

Obviously, turning off "Check for updates" is a work-around, but then I have to remember to manually check for updates. It would be nice if apt/synaptic/update manager detected bad package list/status files and could recover gracefully.