I moved aside the file it was complaining about, which I just mentioned, so I could attach it here. However, by the end of this report, it had been removed by the package system. I had done this, thinking kit would keep it safe:
# mv /var/lib/apt/lists/au.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_trusty- updates_main_i18n_Translation-en /var/lib/apt/lists/aside- au.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_trusty-updates_main_i18n_Translation- en But apparently the package system removes files it doesn't expect to see there, so I'm sorry, I can't give you the copy I had preserved and Browsed to (apparently launchpad doesn't up[load the file then, it waits till you finish filling in the form: bad decision, I guess! Anyway, for now I've just moved that file aside. That allowed Synaptic to run ;properly, and now allows Software Updater to start; but after a while it reports "Failed to download repository information". Ah, and it has an "Updates|" tab, so probably it's the "Software & Updates" thing referred to on the URL provided. (It seems user-unfriendly to name it with the name that you see after you've found it and started it, not the name you area presented with to start running it in the first place!) And I suppose you can work out that that page probably refers to releases other than Trusty, even though you have to read on to discover that, rather than communicating that up-front, and not mentioning Xenial or Yakkety at all. But that said, there is no "Pre-release updates (xenial-proposed)" option, so I still don't know how I can comply with the request, unfortunately! Ah, what the URL *also* doesn't tell you is that you first need to click over to the Developer Options tab and first select: Pre-released update (<NAME>-proposed) Oh. Good thought, but even enabling that didn't make the new option appear under the Updates tab. I then tried closing the updater, and it reported the software list was now out of date and needed reloading. After doing that, I got further error messages: W:http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/dists/stable/Release.gpg: Signature by key 4CCA1EAF950CEE4AB83976DCA040830F7FAC5991 uses weak digest algorithm (SHA1), W:An error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used. GPG error: http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 16126D3A3E5C1192, E:Failed to fetch http://dl.google.com/linux/earth/deb/dists/stable/Release No Hash entry in Release file /var/lib/apt/lists/dl.google.com_linux_earth_deb_dists_stable_Release which is considered strong enough for security purposes, E:Failed to fetch http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/trusty- updates/universe/source/Sources.bz2 Hash Sum mismatch, E:Failed to fetch http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/trusty-updates/main /binary-amd64/Packages.bz2 Hash Sum mismatch, E:Failed to fetch http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/trusty- updates/main/binary-i386/Packages.bz2 Hash Sum mismatch, E:Failed to fetch http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/trusty-updates/universe /binary-amd64/Packages.bz2 Hash Sum mismatch, E:Failed to fetch http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/trusty-updates/universe/i18n /Translation-en Writing more data than expected (235448 > 235322) [IP: 202.158.214.106 80], W:Failed to fetch http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/trusty/Release.gpg The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 16126D3A3E5C1192, W:Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead. Looking under the Authentication tab, all "Trusted software providers" seem well out of date. Clicking Restore Defaults didn't change any of them, however. I removed the Google line, and over on the Other Software tab, I also removed all the lines mentioning Trusty (even though all of them were unchecked, so I assumed were not being used). I also noticed the Google repository was checked on the Other Software tab, and after unchecking that and reloading the repository information, I still got this error: W:An error occurred during the signature verification. The repository is not updated and the previous index files will be used. GPG error: http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 16126D3A3E5C1192, E:Failed to fetch http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/trusty- updates/universe/source/Sources.bz2 Hash Sum mismatch, E:Failed to fetch http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/trusty-updates/main /binary-amd64/Packages.bz2 Hash Sum mismatch, E:Failed to fetch http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/trusty- updates/main/binary-i386/Packages.bz2 Hash Sum mismatch, E:Failed to fetch http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/trusty-updates/universe /binary-amd64/Packages.bz2 Hash Sum mismatch, E:Failed to fetch http://au.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/trusty-updates/universe/i18n /Translation-en Writing more data than expected (235448 > 235322) [IP: 202.158.214.106 80], W:Failed to fetch http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/trusty/Release.gpg The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 16126D3A3E5C1192, W:Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead. Oh, okay, although the name displayed under "Other Software" is generic (like "Recommended updates"), if I actually edit it I see it's referring to the wrong distribution - Ouch! This is painful! Now I went through each line under the Other Software tab, clicked Edit, changed "trusty" to xenial, and close (seems an absurdly manual process). Afterwards, most of the edit items had disappeared: i.e. it was as if I'd removed them, not edited them. After this, I got lost of errors, and had to delete the lines that had been added to /etc/apt/sources.list by using the GUI - apparently it doesn't validate its input, and I made errors. Anyway, I can now check for updates but I get these warnings in the details area in a message that says "Failed to get package details": W:Target Packages (main/binary-amd64/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:32 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target Packages (main/binary-i386/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:32 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target Packages (main/binary-all/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:32 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target Translations (main/i18n/Translation-en) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:32 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target Translations (main/i18n/Translation-en_AU) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:32 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target DEP-11 (main/dep11/Components-amd64.yml) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:32 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target DEP-11-icons (main/dep11/icons-64x64.tar) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:32 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target Packages (universe/binary-amd64/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:34 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target Packages (universe/binary-i386/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:34 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target Packages (universe/binary-all/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:34 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target Translations (universe/i18n/Translation-en) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:34 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target Translations (universe/i18n/Translation-en_AU) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:34 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target DEP-11 (universe/dep11/Components-amd64.yml) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:34 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target DEP-11-icons (universe/dep11/icons-64x64.tar) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:34 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target Packages (multiverse/binary-amd64/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:36 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target Packages (multiverse/binary-i386/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:36 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target Packages (multiverse/binary-all/Packages) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:36 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target Translations (multiverse/i18n/Translation-en) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:36 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target Translations (multiverse/i18n/Translation-en_AU) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:36 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target DEP-11 (multiverse/dep11/Components-amd64.yml) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:36 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:Target DEP-11-icons (multiverse/dep11/icons-64x64.tar) is configured multiple times in /etc/apt/sources.list:36 and /etc/apt/sources.list:65, W:The repository 'http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial Release' does not have a Release file., W:Data from such a repository can't be authenticated and is therefore potentially dangerous to use., W:See apt- secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details., E:Failed to fetch http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/xenial/main/source/Sources 404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.92.152 80], E:Failed to fetch http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/xenial/main/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.92.152 80], E:Failed to fetch http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/xenial/main/binary-i386/Packages 404 Not Found [IP: 91.189.92.152 80], E:Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead. Commenting out these lines in /etc/apt/sources.list: ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by third-party ## developers who want to ship their latest software. deb http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial main deb-src http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial main Got rid of the errors. I imagine the warnings are all still there, but as there are no errors, the warnings have become invisible. Wow. That was painful. Incidentally, here are lines 64 and 65 of my /etc/apt/sources.list, which I believe were added when I clicked the "enable proposed updates" checkbox in the Software Updater GUI.: deb http://mirror.optus.net/ubuntu/ xenial-proposed main universe multiverse deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-security main universe multiverse And here are lines 32-37: deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security main restricted deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security main restricted deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security universe deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security universe deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security multiverse deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security multiverse -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Desktop Bugs, which is subscribed to metacity in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1573478 Title: metacity (flashback) crashes and forces logout To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/metacity/+bug/1573478/+subscriptions -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs