Hi Kjell,

sorry for confirming my own bug. I do not do that anymore, after someone first told me a couple of weeks ago. 

This one is easily reproducible:

sudo update-manager -c -d

Then first type update instead of distribution update above.

Unfortunately I can still not install the dbg nor the dbgsym required (see below).

I reported a bug against it. Someone closed it, then Martin Mai reopened it, then you closed it:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/update-manager/+bug/315462

I have no idea, is this because der Pitti's key was failing?

Duncan Litow said this some days ago:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash

No this message is gone.

Anyway,

I now cannot update-manager under gdb and set logging file. I need to reinstall 8.10 anyway, so I will quickly check if the problem still exists.

root@thomas-laptop:/home/thomas# apt-get install update-manager-core-dbgsym
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.

Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies.
  update-manager-core-dbgsym: Depends: update-manager-core (= 1:0.93.34) but 1:0.93.35 is to be installed
E: Broken packages
root@thomas-laptop:/home/thomas# lsb_release -rd ; uname -a ; apt-cache policy update-manager update-manager-core update-manager-core-dbgsym ; date
Description:	Ubuntu 8.10
Release:	8.10
Linux thomas-laptop 2.6.27-12-generic #1 SMP Thu Feb 5 09:26:35 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
update-manager:
  Installed: 1:0.93.35
  Candidate: 1:0.93.35
  Version table:
 *** 1:0.93.35 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid-proposed/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1:0.93.34 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid-updates/main Packages
     1:0.93.32 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
update-manager-core:
  Installed: 1:0.93.35
  Candidate: 1:0.93.35
  Version table:
 *** 1:0.93.35 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid-proposed/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1:0.93.34 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid-updates/main Packages
     1:0.93.32 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
update-manager-core-dbgsym:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 1:0.93.34
  Version table:
     1:0.93.34 0
        500 http://ddebs.ubuntu.com intrepid-updates/main Packages
        500 http://ddebs.ubuntu.com intrepid-updates/main Packages
     1:0.93.32 0
        500 http://ddebs.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
        500 http://ddebs.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
Tue Feb 17 19:07:30 GMT 2009
root@thomas-laptop:/home/thomas# 

root@thomas-laptop:/home/thomas# apt-cache search update-manager | grep "dbg"
update-manager-core-dbgsym - debug symbols for package update-manager-core
root@thomas-laptop:/home/thomas# 

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/intrepid/i386/+search?text=update-manager-core-dbgsym


Binary package search results
Find binary packages in The Intrepid Ibex for i386 (x86) matching:
Includes package names and descriptions.
No packages matching 'update-manager-core-dbgsym' are published in Ubuntu Intrepid i386.