Ubuntu
apt package

apt-get unable to read /etc/apt/sources.list

Bug #99090 reported by Shirish Agarwal
10
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Baltix
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned
apt (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Hi all,
        I installed ubuntu 7.04 beta through the alternate-CD. I checked the CD for defects beforehand & it went smoothly. I installed the system & everything booted normally. Now I checked with sources to update, with the Indian server it doesn't download the package lists, with the main server (american) it downloads the package list & shows the no. of updates needed to get but hangs there. My original /etc/sources.list is at http://paste.ubuntu-nl.org/12953/plain/ then after advice from people on the chat channel modified to http://paste.ubuntu-nl.org/12968/ but I'm not able to update. I get a constant error message even if I change the server from India to main (US, I guess) or vice-versa. The error message is as under :-

A error occured, please run package manager from the right-click menu or apt-get on a terminal to see what is wrong

The error message was : "Error:Opening the cache(E:Type '??' is not known on line 1 in sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list, E: The list of sources could not be read.)

Now please lemme know what/where I'm going wrong. Thnx in advance.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Mar 30 22:01:06 2007
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.04
Uname: Linux ubuntu 2.6.20-12-generic #2 SMP Wed Mar 21 20:55:46 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

Revision history for this message
Shirish Agarwal (shirishag75) wrote :

my /etc/apt/sources.list

Revision history for this message
Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto) wrote :

The file you have attached seems to be corrupted. When you edited the file did you save it in an UTF-8 format?

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Shirish Agarwal (shirishag75) wrote :

nope, I didn't do anything outside of using sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list to see the files. I copied verbatim the contents as they show. I'm also surpised at the chinese/japanese characters tht it showed.

Revision history for this message
Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto) wrote :

Well, I'm not too familiar with UTF-16 and I could be totally wrong, but its worth a try.
When you saved the file, the file was saved with the UTF-16 encoding (I guess this is the standard encoding for India, as you want to be able to use your Indian alphabetical characters).
It is possible (its just a wild guess) that apt-get will not recognise this encoding and get confused.
Can you try saving the file with an UTF-8 or western (ISO-8859-15) encoding? You will find the option at the botton of the dialog when you click the "Save as ..." entry from the File menu.
I would also delete the extra chinese/japanese characters at the end of the file.

Revision history for this message
Shirish Agarwal (shirishag75) wrote :

I deleted the extra chinese characters/japanese characters but they seemed to crop up again & again. I want to use hindi letters but tht comes l8ter. I used the alternate CD to set up & there is/was no way to set up the encodings so I guess the default setup includes all the encodings. Anyways, I tried to re-install the OS from the CD again & now I'm stuck at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/debian-installer/+bug/99303 which seems to tell me tht something is bad with the alternate CD. This bug is re-producible each time.

Revision history for this message
Cesare Tirabassi (norsetto) wrote :

OK, so I will close this bug report for now.
Please let me now if you disagree.

Changed in apt:
status: Unconfirmed → Rejected
Revision history for this message
Shirish Agarwal (shirishag75) wrote :

please do the needful. I hope to see if it happens again on 6th April or whenever Herd 6 is out. :)

Revision history for this message
Shirish Agarwal (shirishag75) wrote :

Another thing I forgot to add, one time the Software sources thing crashed yesterday & the launchpad integration sent a bug report with the Stacktrace & everything but there was no transaction no. or anything I could see or note down. It was a 1 MB file which it uploaded & then just closed. I don't know where it sent the file.

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