Trying to fix a broken repository. Clicking "software sources" from administration menu doesn't do anything, and also Repositories from the Synaptic menu doesn't do anything either.

[Chief Fox]

Binary package hint: synaptic

First noticed an exclamation mark icon on the system tray, and a mouse hover details explain that I have a broken/missing source in my repositories. So instead of removing that source in my repository list, I can't open the list from Synaptic or in the Administration Gnome Menu either. I do not know of a command to do so, or fix the broken link.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: LinuxMint 7
ExecutablePath: /usr/sbin/synaptic
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: synaptic 0.62.5ubuntu3 [modified: usr/share/applications/synaptic.desktop]
ProcAttrCurrent: unconfined
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: synaptic
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-18-generic x86_64
UnreportableReason: This is not a genuine LinuxMint package

[Chief Fox (krgrubbs)]

I checked this as a security vulnerability bug, because I figure not being able to access updates can possibly pose as a threat towards the operating system in the future.

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but this appears to be a "regular" (non-security) bug. I have unmarked it as a security issue since this bug does not show evidence of allowing attackers to cross privilege boundaries nor directly cause loss of data/privacy. Please feel free to report any other bugs you may find.

[Chief Fox (krgrubbs)]

@Marc. Thanks for clearing up my question on the security issue. I found a temporary work around. Since the link in the Gnome menu was broken and also in synaptic, I found a terminal command, which opens the source file in a Gedit window. the command is:
"sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.lst"
It's just a command that opens the sources list file like a text file, and you can manually erase any broken links. I knew a specific source was broken because I was getting an error on the system tray which was an exclamation mark icon. Trying to run an update resulted with the exact broken souce, I just copied and searched in the sources.lst file for that address and removed it, then saved the file and closed the window. Now an update can be run without any broken link errors.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Thanks for following up.

I'm closing this report because it was due to an invalid entry in the sources list and it's not a bug with synaptic.

Don't hesitate to submit any new bug you may find.

[Chief Fox (krgrubbs)]

An invalid source wouldn't stop the source from opening. The problem lies in Synaptic where the sources link wouldn't open the file. It also would not open from the Gnome menu > System > Administration > software sources. I would consider this a bug, why don't you?

[Chief Fox (krgrubbs)]

I found a temporary workaround by running a terminal window to edit the repository sources: sudo gedit et/c/apt/sources.list