Software updater no longer functional

[MR ZenWiz]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2017 at 3:11 PM, MR ZenWiz <mrzenwiz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 24, 2017 at 1:58 PM, Colin Law <clanlaw at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 24 January 2017 at 21:37, MR ZenWiz <mrzenwiz at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> First, thanks to all who responded.  Unfortunately, none of the
>>> suggestions has had any impact.  The apt-get commands all succeeded
>>> without any fuss or significant output.  The updater indicator remains
>>> a red dot with the white line through it, and the updater fails every
>>> time.  If I click on the "Show Updates", it does nothing.  If I click
>>> "Check for updates", it goes out and get the updates to display, but
>>> when I click on "Install Now", the updater shows a blank update window
>>> and never does anything.
>>
>> Have you recently updated to 16.04? In which case perhaps [0] is
>> related. In fact it may be related anyway.
>>
>> What does apt-cache policy update-manager show?
>>
>> Colin
>>
>> [0] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/+bug/1573177
>>
> admar at marbase:~/Downloads $ sudo apt-cache policy update-manager
> [sudo] password for admar:
> update-manager:
>   Installed: 1:16.04.5
>   Candidate: 1:16.04.5
>   Version table:
>  *** 1:16.04.5 500
>         500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main
> amd64 Packages
>         500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main
> i386 Packages
>         100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
>      1:16.04.3 500
>         500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/main amd64 Packages
>         500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/main i386 Packages
>
> I see the errors noted in the bug - I posted a text file with them in
> it at the beginning of this thread.
>
> I've done a fair number of updates since 9/9/2016, and the error is
> still happening.  Is there another patch I can/need to install?

Looks like this was fixed in 16.10 and not back-ported.  Can we
arrange that (and how)?

Thanks.