Comment 12 for bug 1573478

The link https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed talks about Ubuntu 14.04 and something called Softwatre & Updates:

"To enable the proposed archive for Ubuntu 14.04 use the Software & Updates program and ensure that Pre-release updates (trusty-proposed) is ticked in the Updates tab."

Is "Software & Updates" the same thing as System Tools -> Administration -> Update Manager, or Software Updater?

I got a crash when I tried to start Software Updater (it asked if I wanted to report it as a I relaunched it: but relaunching just crashed again). When I chose Update Manager, the window appeared then vanished.

I've attached the excerpt from /var/syslog.

I saw a warning a few days ago stating that one of my repositories for trusty (extensions, IIRC) was not able to be fetched as its signature was missing or out of date, and so I went into Update Manager and unchecked the single repository that matched. That sounds relevant, as I'm running Ubuntu 16.04. Also possibly relevant is a red danger-triangle that has been appearing on the top status/widget bar in the Flashback/Metacity UI, related to system updates: none of the options provided via the warning icon's drop-down menu actually worked (I think the options included: check for updates, install updates), but I was able to run Synaptic and Mark All Upgrade and then Apply and the red warning triangle went away following the updates synpatic found and applied.

Ah, and starting synaptic now reports an error in a more friendly way:

E: Encountered a section with no Package: header
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/au.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_trusty-updates_main_i18n_Translation-en
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.

I'll add another comment and attach that file, too: it looks binary to me.