Linux Mint Not Updating

upgrade

I literally installed it last night. This morning I saw an update icon but when I click Update Manager it says

ERROR###ERROR###ERROR###ERROR###ERROR###ERROR###ERROR E:Encountered a
section with no Package: header, E:Problem with MergeList
/var/lib/apt/lists/packages.linuxmint.com_dists_petra_import_i18n_Translation-en,
E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

Does anyone know a fix?

Best Answer

What the other answer says.

In rather more detail: I'd suggest firstly, you do an APT clean-up, and then secondly, you do a full system upgrade from the shell.

1: Clean-up

sudo apt-get clean ; sudo apt-get autoclean ; sudo apt-get purge ; sudo apt-get autoremove -y

2: Full update

sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y

Then reboot. I suspect you'll find your errors in the GUI update tool will have gone. I'd had similar issues with Mint's GUI updater myself & now I preferentially use the shell.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Is it safe to manually perform ‘apt-get update’ ‘s operation

This sounds like it may work, but personally, I'd just use apt-offline.

From the manpage:

apt-offline brings offline package management functionality to Debian based system. It can be used to download packages and its dependencies to be installed later on (or required to update) a disconnected machine. Packages can be downloaded from a different connected machine.

Excerpt from Debian Administration:

Using apt-offline:

You generate a signature on your Debian box at home and carry the signature file on a removable medium
Now you take the USB Stick (with the apt-offline.txt signature file) to the office machine which could be running any linux version or even Windows.
There, you could run apt-offline giving it the signature file.
apt-offline would generate you an archive file or a folder with all the data. That data can be copied on a removable media. The removable media can be attached back to the disconnected Debian box at home and installed. (e.g. "apt-offline install /tmp/apt-offline.zip")

Debian Linux – Fix `apt update` Failed Issues

First of all, despite the last line start with E: (which indicates an error), apt didn't fail entirely; it's downloaded most of the updated package lists, it only skipped those for Opera and the Google Talk plugin. So apt upgrade should still offer to upgrade all the other packages.

The warnings give you some indication of what went wrong:

W: gpgv:/var/lib/apt/lists/dl.google.com_linux_talkplugin_deb_dists_stable_Release.gpg: The repository is insufficiently signed by key 4CCA1EAF950CEE4AB83976DCA040830F7FAC5991 (weak digest)
W: gpgv:/var/lib/apt/lists/deb.opera.com_opera_dists_stable_InRelease: The repository is insufficiently signed by key 419D0ACF314E8E993F7F92E563F7D4AFF6D61D45 (weak digest)
W: Failed to fetch http://dl.google.com/linux/talkplugin/deb/dists/stable/Release  No Hash entry in Release file /var/lib/apt/lists/dl.google.com_linux_talkplugin_deb_dists_stable_Release, which is considered strong enough for security purposes

The first two mean that the repository descriptors were signed with an old digest algorithm, which apt now complains about. The third is caused by apt's recent switch to SHA-256 or SHA-512 hashes only; the Talk plugin repository only provides MD5 and SHA-1 hashes, which are now ignored by apt.

To fix this, you can either remove the repositories for the time being, or wait for Opera and Google to fix them...