gnome-terminal can't run dpkg --configure -a refuse to grant superuser privilege and cache->open()failed

[victoria]

Binary package hint: gnome-terminal

inary package hint: gnome-terminal

Evertime I try to install updates or download any application off the ubuntu applications menu this thing pops up and says an error occured. When I try to type 'dpkg --configure -a' or 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' in a terminal it doesn't help. I'm using 8.04. version of ubuntu.every time i try to run dpkg terminal says i need to have superuser priviledge to do that

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-terminal
Package: gnome-terminal 2.24.1-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-terminal
Uname: Linux 2.6.27-7-generic i686