Software Updater

[Geoffrey Combes]

Hello Paul, Here are the results of commands requested., the last not 
looking useful but perhaps it tells you something,
geoffrey at geoffrey-desktop:~$ sudo df
[sudo] password for geoffrey:
Filesystem     1K-blocks     Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1      957432452 78607048 830167536   9% /
none                   4        0         4   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev             1926972        4   1926968   1% /dev
tmpfs             387312     1168    386144   1% /run
none                5120        0      5120   0% /run/lock
none             1936548      168   1936380   1% /run/shm
none              102400       56    102344   1% /run/user
geoffrey at geoffrey-desktop:~$ df -i
Filesystem       Inodes  IUsed    IFree IUse% Mounted on
/dev/sda1      60809216 401258 60407958    1% /
none             213680      2   213678    1% /sys/fs/cgroup
udev             208893    511   208382    1% /dev
tmpfs            213680    517   213163    1% /run
none             213680      3   213677    1% /run/lock
none             213680      7   213673    1% /run/shm
none             213680     30   213650    1% /run/user
geoffrey at geoffrey-desktop:~$ dpkg --configure -a
dpkg: error: requested operation requires superuser privilege
geoffrey at geoffrey-desktop:~$

As you see I have a 1.0 TB HDD which is 9% full.
By the way I again tried installing the application 'Octave' this time 
to see if it supplied any further information on the error. It did but 
the info may be specific to Octave. Anyway here is the error message:
dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting
reading file list for package 'gedit-common':
input/output error  Error in function

Should I have to re-install 14.04 it seems that I can't download the 
latest from the server because of the dpkg problem. Therefore I must use 
the 14.04 disk that I have and re-load the current Home directory from 
my external back-up HDD. I think that means I will lose Firefox and 
Thunderbird stored information and re-install programmes, some of which 
have valuable databases  fortunately stored in the home directory. And 
of course I will have to update 14.04 - all achievable if a little pesky.

Thanks for your time, Geoffrey