KPackageKit error [Probably solved]

[Teunis]

Since about a week I'm behind a nasty firewall that has disabled apt-get.
Strange enough the much and rightfully criticised KPackageKit does work.

But since this morning it fails to update with the following message:

Error Type:
Error Value: coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, exceptions.SystemError found
File : /usr/share/PackageKit/helpers/apt/aptBackend.py, line 2216, in
main()
File : /usr/share/PackageKit/helpers/apt/aptBackend.py, line 2213, in main
run(args, options.single)
File : /usr/share/PackageKit/helpers/apt/aptBackend.py, line 2175, in run
backend.dispatcher(args)
File : /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/packagekit/backend.py, line 699, in dispatcher
self.dispatch_command(args[0], args[1:])
File : /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/packagekit/backend.py, line 606, in dispatch_command
self.refresh_cache(force)
File : /usr/share/PackageKit/helpers/apt/aptBackend.py, line 202, in _locked_cache
func(*args, **kwargs)
File : /usr/share/PackageKit/helpers/apt/aptBackend.py, line 1498, in refresh_cache
format_string(error.message))
File : /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/packagekit/backend.py, line 723, in format_string
txt = unicode(text, encoding, errors='replace')

I saw this (identical) error report:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...it/+bug/546607

Can anyone give a hint as to where else I could look for a solution?

[vinnywright]

Re: KPackageKit error

strang.....I thought Kpackagekit was just a frunt end for apt-get...?

the guy in the bug report sead it was a bad line in the sources list.

what dose apt-get Error out with?

VINNY

[Teunis]

Re: KPackageKit error

Apt-get exits with time-outs.
KPackageKit is often very slow but until this error did get the job done, including this update of 474 packages.
Now I've disabled all the extra repositories and it just hangs.

Ah well, next week I'll be back on proper internet access.

[vinnywright]

Re: KPackageKit error

Ah well, next week I'll be back on proper internet access.

well untill next week then.............

but you would think if you could serf the web you could use apt-get......

VINNY

[Teunis]

Re: KPackageKit error

Yes I would think so.
But it's through the proxy server of a very large and jealous company, for example Windows and even virus updates are disabled.
First I thought they blacklisted certain servers so I tried just about any Ubuntu mirror in the list but it made no difference. Yet KPackageKit gets it's data.

[ubersoft]

Re: KPackageKit error

Have you tried another package manager like synaptic?

[Teunis]

Re: KPackageKit error

Yep, tried Adept and Synaptic to, all time out.

[Teunis]

Re: KPackageKit error

I seem to have overcome the problem with KPackageKit.
I need to manually remove the three 'lock' files:

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock
sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/lock
sudo rm /var/cache/apt/archives/lock

Whether this is really the solution remains to be seen.