jlm-blog
~jlm

20-Nov-2012

How not to do automatic updates

Filed under: linux — jlm @ 10:47

Today’s attempt at upgrading packages produced this:

Reading package lists... Error!
E: Encountered a section with no Package: header
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/extras.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_precise_main_i18n_Translation-en
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

The contents of that file?

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
   <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">  
   <META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">
   <META HTTP-EQUIV="refresh" CONTENT="0;url=https://login.wifiportal.co.nz">
   <TITLE>Welcome to FIVO Hotspot, Product of Natcom LTD NZ</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>

</BODY>
</HTML>

I don’t have unattended upgrades enabled on my Ubuntu laptop. Nevertheless, there’s something which goes around and replaces files in /var/lib/apt with whatever junk it gets from whatever network it happens to be connected to at random times. Can I be the only person who thinks this is a Really Bad Idea?

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