Re: Apt Crippled

[David Baron <d_baron@012.net.il>]

On Saturday 12 February 2011 21:30:20 debian-user-digest-
request@lists.debian.org wrote:
> > For several days (after squeeze release), I have been getting the
> > following 
> >
> > error and can no longer run anything in apt, update or upgrading:
> > 
> > 
> >
> > Reading package lists... Error!
> > E: Encountered a section with no Package: header
> > E: Problem with MergeList 
> > /var/lib/apt/lists/debian.co.il_debian_dists_testing_contrib_i18n_Transla
> > tion- en
> > E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
> >
> > 
> >
> > What to do about it
> 
> Moving the files in /var/lib/apt/lists/ out of the way and rerunning
> apt-get update is worth a try.

Did that. It stumbles at the same point:


Get:147 http://debian.co.il stable/non-free Translation-en                                                                  
99% [143 Translation-en bzip2 0 B] [Connecting to debian.co.il] [Waiting for 
headers]                            943 kB/s 0sbzip2: (stdin) is not a bzip2 
file.
99% [144 Translation-en_US bzip2 0 B] [Connecting to debian.co.il] [Waiting 
for headers]                         943 kB/s 0sbzip2: (stdin) is not a bzip2 
file.
99% [145 Translation-en bzip2 0 B] [Connecting to debian.co.il] [Waiting for 
headers]                            943 kB/s 0sbzip2: (stdin) is not a bzip2 
file.
* * * *

The error shown in synaptic also indicates this point of error:

E: Encountered a section with no Package: header
E: Problem with MergeList 
/var/lib/apt/lists/debian.co.il_debian_dists_testing_contrib_i18n_Translation-
en
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.