New install of Hardy not updating packages!?!

[Corey Burger]

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 9:37 PM, Paolo Di Battista
<paolodibattista at rogers.com> wrote:
> Hi all. I recently cleaned off the system hard drive in my RAID 5 NAS and
> installed Hardy i386.  Since the new install it keeps telling me there are
> updates (the number is currently at 138). When I click on the notification
> icon Update Manager opens, but when I then click on update the mouse pointer
> changes to the "I'm thinking" circle but never changes from there.  I don't
> get a password prompt or any change, it just keeps going until I force
> Ubuntu to shut down the Update Manager application.
>
>
>
> Furthermore, there are some applications that just don't seem to start, for
> example System-Administration-Login Window.  When I select it, two buttons
> appear on the bottom of the screen: one is "Starting Administrative
> Application" and the other is "Login Window", but after a few moments they
> disappear and Login Window never opens.
>
>
>
> Anybody have any suggestions?

It looks like there is something wrong with gksudo, the wrapper around
sudo. Open a terminal and type:
sudo update-manager

If that works, then the issue is gksudo and not sudo itself. If it
doesn't, tell us, because the issue gets a whole lot more complex to
fix.

Corey