I encountered the following error in Aptitude after my Ubuntu 9.10 box fubar’d during an install. The message given by synaptic is similar.
Reading package lists… Error!
E: Encountered a section with no Package: header
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/dpkg/status
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
The following sequence of commands fixed it for me.
#: cd /var/lib/dpkg
#: sudo mv status status-bad
#: sudo cp status-old status
#: sudo apt-get update
I’ve not posted about this, but I recently repurposed an ancient pc into an ubuntu linux box. All went well except the display configuration in the xorg.conf file. The old ATI video card I had for that system went out years ago, since then its only had crappyvia integrated video card. Well, after finagleing for a week (granted I didn’t spend much time on it) , I finally got everything setup the way I want it.
$ lspci returned: “01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. VT8375 [ProSavage8 KM266/KL266]
Here is a link to my configuration: xorg.conf.