Bit of further investigation: My routers connection to my DSL went down and it looks like the file mentioned in the error message has been overwritten by the html error page supplied by the router when it couldn't connect to the internet, see attached.
It appears many other (but not all) files in /var/lib/apt/lists have also been overwritten with this html error message and this is what is preventing the package managers from starting. Deleting each of the files which had been overwritten allowed synaptic to start successfully though I think I lost a couple of repositories. Maybe the package managers could sdo some validiation before writing to the config files? ** Attachment added: "'MergeList' specified in synaptic error message" http://launchpadlibrarian.net/32521743/gb.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_jaunty-updates_main_binary-i386_Packages -- package manager,update manger not working https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/389569 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
