"The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened"

Bug #1008105 reported by Adam Carter
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
update-manager (Ubuntu)
New
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Hi,

My Task bar at the top has a stop sign. An error keeps occurring.

E:Read error - read (5: Input/output error), E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

I am running U12.04 5.2.2

I am attempting to Update My Software

The program loads what needs to be updated (currently 165 packages) however when I click on Install Updates it fails with the above error code.

And it has requested that I inform a member of the development team. So I am.

Hope this helps you guys :-)

All the best,

Adam Carter

Adam Carter (adamcarter)
description: updated
Aditya V (kroq-gar78)
affects: ubuntu → apt (Ubuntu)
Aditya V (kroq-gar78)
affects: apt (Ubuntu) → update-manager (Ubuntu)
summary: - Update Manager
+ "The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened"
Revision history for this message
John Drinkwater (johndrinkwater) wrote :

`apt` needs to be more robust against this kind of breakage. A 3rd party repo today updated a file which had a broken Depends field, and that broke update-manager from being usable, and synaptic from getting beyond the initial loading - it refused to work.

```
john@joran ~/code/UnrealEngine ±:promoted❯ sudo apt install build-essential mono-gmcs mono-xbuild mono-dmcs libmono-corlib4.0-cil libmono-system-data-datasetextensions4.0-cil
[sudo] password for john:
Reading package lists... Error!
E: Problem parsing dependency Depends
E: Error occurred while processing keybase (NewVersion2)
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/dist.keybase.io_linux_deb_repo_dists_stable_main_binary-amd64_Packages
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
```

To link the issue with the upstream that caused it https://github.com/keybase/client/issues/2129

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