Trouble with Muon, APT, and Synaptic

[erchie]

When I type "sudo apt-get update" in a terminal, I get the following message:

~$ sudo apt-get update
[sudo] password for rip:
E: Malformed line 58 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list (dist parse)
E: The list of sources could not be read.



When I try to open Synaptic, I get the following message:

E: Malformed line 58 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list (dist parse)
E: The list of sources could not be read.
Go to the repository dialog to correct the problem.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.

I opened Midnight Commander and searched in /etc/apt/sources.list and found line 58 to be:
"deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/ppa/ubuntu/ saucy main", so I unchecked it in the repositories accessed in Muon Package Manager, but still received the same messages when making new attempts to use APT and open Synaptic. Now I get a message that says my configuration may be broken (with a red +_ and the statement that 'type "-" is not known on line 1 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list'.

How can I rebuild my 'sources.list'? In Synaptic, I cannot get to the repository dialog to correct the problem-- when I close the message box, all of Synaptic disappears. I also cannot find 'E: _cache->open() failed, please report.' and I am not sure how to make a bug report.

Until this is solved, I cannot download any new apps or upgrade or do anything else on Muon or Synaptic or APT.

Prior to this problem I tried the MAIN server, but then shifted back to the US Server-- that's when all the trouble started.

[sithlord48]

you will need to open the file /etc/apt/sources.list and correct the error that is on line 58 (wrong distro name?).

can you please post line 58 for us here so we can check it for correctness. and what version are you running? (so we know what name to check for )

[Teunis]

Even better, there ought to be a copy called sources.list.save and hopefully it is not corrupted, rename it to sources.list.

[erchie]

I spent 7 hours wrestling with the problem, which I described in as much detail as I had in my original post. Nothing I tried worked (the effort I made was summarised in my original post) so I said, to heck with it-- it obviously resulted from having ppa's that I put into my repository lists. So I took 40 minutes and reinstalled the ISO I downloaded to a DVD, and the install took only 35 minutes, because my only drive is a 512 GB SSD + a 3.8 GHz quad chip Asus MB with 2xDDR3 1600 8GB RAM, and I a 50 GB connection which actually pumps 75 GB a lot of the time (Comcast). Everything is back to normal now. I just finished, and was returning to my post to mark it SOLVED, when I got your replies to my original post. Thanks for taking the time to answer back so fast. All of the details of the original problem are in my original post-- I failed in my attempts to edit the lines with a good outcome, not being familiar with tasks like that in my normal operations.

The two messages that started it were:

"E: Malformed line 58 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list (dist parse)
E: The list of sources could not be read." and

"E: Malformed line 58 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list (dist parse)
E: The list of sources could not be read.
Go to the repository dialog to correct the problem.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report."

Then I got "
"type '-' is not known on line 1 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list".

Since I have already overwritten the old Line 1, I cannot repeat it exactly, but it was something like "- CD ROM (etc) Saucy (etc)", which should have started with # instead of a - .

[Teunis]

Thanks for completing the story.

[andystmartin]

FYI. For me, the kubuntu-ppa line looks like this:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/backports/ubuntu saucy main

Notice the "backports" in the URL.

[sithlord48]

there are a few different ppas on the kubuntu-ppa backports , ppa , beta , staging and expermental . each is a place for packages that are in different stages of being release ready.