Re: Apt Crippled

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

On Wednesday 16 February 2011 22:56:40 David Baron wrote:
> On Saturday 12 February 2011 22:54:16 David Baron wrote:
> > 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_Tra
> > > > ns la 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_Transla
> > ti on- en
> > E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
> > E: _cache->open() failed, please report.
> 
> All of these files contain a <b> ... no such file </b> error message, 80
> chars.
> 
> Error persists. No upgrades. No reportbug-ng. Nada. Has something been
> fixed that can be manually installed (since apt wont work any more--will
> dpkg)?

How to get this mess to work?
Remove from var/lib/apt/lists all *Translations*
*nemerle*
*experimental*

I took all mirrors off sources.list except debian's own.