Ubuntu

Update-manager could not initialise package info. Error message "E:malformed line 56 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list(URLparse), E: The list of sources could not be read"

Asked by Jeff Lowe

1. Current version is Ubuntu 9.10
2. 'apt-cache policy pkgname' yielded W: Unable to locate package pkgname.
3. I was trying to update from Ubuntu 9.10 to 10.04, in the same way that I did it to get from 9.04 to 9.10, via System>Administration>Update Manager.
4. The message quoted in the summary above, appeared.

I have read Reporting Bugs, and Debugging Procedures; apport is not initiated when I went to start Update Manager - the same Error message appeared.

If I update from a live 10.04 CD, would the bug migrate?
But, if I wipe 9.10 before re-installing 10.04 from the live CD, then I'd lose all my data on that partition because there'd be nothing to migrate?

What a bummer!!!

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This question was originally filed as bug #711040.

Revision history for this message
Leo Arias (elopio) said : 		#1

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue and helping to make Ubuntu better. Examining the information you have given us, this does not appear to be a bug report so we are closing it and converting it to a question in the support tracker. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but it would make more sense to raise problems you are having in the support tracker at https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu if you are uncertain if they are bugs. For help on reporting bugs, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs .

Revision history for this message
Leo Arias (elopio) said : 		#2

You have probably added a malformed line to the sources file.

Open the file /etc/apt/sources.list and check the line 56. You should fix that line, or remove it.

You can read about the right format for this file here: http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-basico.en.html#s-sources.list

In order to open sources.list and be able to save changes, you can enter on the terminal:
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

Can you help with this problem?

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