Update manager error: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened

'E:Encountered a section with no Package: header, E:Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/security.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_jaunty-security_restricted_binary-i386_Packages, E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.'

i have reported this problem. it wont allow me to open update manager it just displays this message, or package installer.

what do i do?

dan

Does it also say something like "Please run; dpkg --configure -a"?

You may simply try via terminal commands to fix it:
sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install -f

Reference:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=863742
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/+bug/370294
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptGet/Howto
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UsingTheTerminal

Cross post:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/77387

Thanks so much mark, this got rid of the error message symbol and has allowed me to start up my update manager and everything. thanks so much buddy, i feel like sending you flowers.

Dan

Congrats, and welcome to linux-land, especially the Ubuntu corner of it :))
Regards from
Tom :)

Hi Mark,

Your solution helped me too. Only I did it a little bit different or maybe I did not quite understand what you meant. This is what happened.
I copied the first command: sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/info/* , but then got an error message. Then I tried to remove the content of /info, but again got an error (cd /var/lib/dpkg/info/ en sudo rm * ).
Finally I copied the whole block of commands in my terminal and then "something" happened in the terminal. Probably (I think) the commands you gave were executed. Now my system is completely OK again, but maybe you can imagine that I am wondering what happened exactly. Didn't I read your description well or was there something wrong in the description or did something else happen. I'm rather curious.

But nevertheless, thank you very, very much for helping me out.

There seems to be a lot of variables in there. Maybe when you thought you had quit all the package managers there was still some process running involving one of them. To see all the processes running just type in

ps aux

but that is usually more useful if you filter it through a pipe and use 'grep' to do the filtering. Eg to see only firefox stuff that is running try

ps aux | grep firefox

to stop a process you can find the process id number that way and then key in something like

kill 12345

Note that in the grep'd command you will see the "ps aux" command is included in the output list even tho by the time your human eyes are reading it the process will have finished as the process doesnt take long to complete

Thank you Mark it worked very well.
Regards!