Comment 3 for bug 1063589

this is happening to me with Lubuntu 12.10.

Update manager runs in the background & alerts each week of updates.

I usually select 'remind me later'.

Then when I run Synaptic etc to add specific packages there is a crash.

It is then impossible to run the software updater to perform the 'pending upgrades', or Synaptic to add / remove packages.

I found a work-around from 'actionparsnip' that is a script to download from dropbox, purging apt-cache etc; will post a link.

Problem with this is that it seem to download a huge amount of data due to all packages being refreshed / re-fetched.

2nd time the crash occurred, the 'crash log' (which apport has sent to 'Ubuntu' automatically) gave me this specific bug reference.

Why is it occurring ? (I have another machine running Ubuntu 11.10 that has never exhibited this).

How to:

- recover without having to refresh all packages = big download..

- stop it happening on the Lubuntu machine (pending 'proper' fix).

thanks.