[Bug 898758] [NEW] update-manager crashes; problem with merge list

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I'm fairly close to a noob on this, so I'm just reporting exactly what
the error window says:

<quote>
Could not initialize the package information

An unresolvable problem occurred while initializing the package
information.

Please report this bug against the 'update-manager' package and include
the following error message:

'E:Encountered a section with no Package: header, E:Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric_universe_binary-i386_Packages, E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.'
</quote>

So I'm stuck with a system that cannot update itself.  Running the
command "sudo apt-get update" from the terminal causes the following
error:

<quote>
Reading package lists... Error!
E: Encountered a section with no Package: header
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_oneiric_universe_binary-i386_Packages
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
</quote>

Should I wait for a bug fix, or should I completely reinstall Ubuntu?

This is a system where the initial install was 11.04 and then I allowed
the upgrade to 11.10.  That was a month ago and it has been running OK
until this error that first occurred today.  The only recent activity
that I imagine might be connected to this is, I recently ran the
"Janitor" utility to try to improve boot and shutdown performance.  It
did result in an improvement.  That is the first time I've ever run that
utility.  I ran it two or three times until it found nothing else to
remove.  That was several days ago, and the system worked OK since then,
but maybe there was already a problem with update-manager after I ran
the Janitor util.

Attached is the contents of /var/log/dist-upgrade in a single file, "bugfiles" which was created with:
tar -cvz --file bugfiles /var/log/dist-upgrade/*

** Affects: update-manager (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

-- 
update-manager crashes; problem with merge list
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/898758
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