Trouble started when I used usb-creator-gtk to create a bootable 14.04.3 USB flash drive. As the app was actually running, synaptic (v 0.81.1) was launched (not by me). Its GUI stayed on screen after usb-creator-gtk quietly exited (no error message). I terminated synaptic manually in the GUI.
Now software-center crashes immediately upon launching it from either cli or gui. synaptic on the other hand opens and seems to run correctly. A red and white "one-way street" icon now resides on my Unity bar. Clicking on it, I read above a few menu items:
An error occurred. Please run Package Manager from the right-click menu or run apt-get from a terminal to see what is wrong. The error message was: Unknown Error: '' (E:Opening /etc/apt/source.list - ifstream::ifstream(13:Permission denied))'. This usually means that your installed packages have unmet dependencies.
What I tried:
-1- Below the above blurb are a a few functional menu items, among them "Start Package Manager". That starts synaptic in the GUI. Menu "Edit//Reload Package Information" yields:
**Could not load all repo items**<BR>
Failed to fetch cdrom://Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS _Trusty Tahr_ - Beta amd64 (20150805)/dists/trusty/main/binary-amd64/Packages Please use apt-cdrom to make this CD-ROM recognized by APT. apt-get update cannot be used to add new CD-ROMs
Failed to fetch cdrom://Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS _Trusty Tahr_ - Beta amd64 (20150805)/dists/trusty/restricted/binary-amd64/Packages Please use apt-cdrom to make this CD-ROM recognized by APT. apt-get update cannot be used to add new CD-ROMs
Failed to fetch cdrom://Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS _Trusty Tahr_ - Beta amd64 (20150805)/dists/trusty/main/binary-i386/Packages Please use apt-cdrom to make this CD-ROM recognized by APT. apt-get update cannot be used to add new CD-ROMs
Failed to fetch cdrom://Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS _Trusty Tahr_ - Beta amd64 (20150805)/dists/trusty/restricted/binary-i386/Packages Please use apt-cdrom to make this CD-ROM recognized by APT. apt-get update cannot be used to add new CD-ROMs
Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
I never had a CD-ROM for Trusty 14.04.3, so I went on to troubleshoot...
-2- Below that, I checked out menu item "Software & Updates".
In its usual GUI window, all settings are blanked, all extra ppa's I added in the past 18 months are there. Upon closing a crash report is generated. I checked it in/var/crash:
$ ls -AFls /var/crash
total 4512
0 -rw-rw---- 1 root whoopsie 0 Dec 29 09:47 .lock
68 -rw-r----- 1 user whoopsie 62385 Dec 29 11:06 _usr_bin_software-properties-gtk.1000.crash
0 -rw-rw---- 1 user whoopsie 0 Dec 29 11:06 _usr_bin_software-properties-gtk.1000.upload
0 -rw------- 1 whoopsie whoopsie 0 Dec 29 11:06 _usr_bin_software-properties-gtk.1000.uploaded
64 -rw-r----- 1 user whoopsie 59440 Dec 29 11:32 _usr_bin_update-manager.1000.crash
0 -rw-rw---- 1 user whoopsie 0 Dec 29 11:32 _usr_bin_update-manager.1000.upload
0 -rw------- 1 whoopsie whoopsie 0 Dec 29 11:32 _usr_bin_update-manager.1000.uploaded
28 -rw-r----- 1 user whoopsie 24652 Dec 29 11:08 _usr_share_oneconf_oneconf-service.1000.crash
0 -rw-rw---- 1 user whoopsie 0 Dec 29 11:08 _usr_share_oneconf_oneconf-service.1000.upload
0 -rw------- 1 whoopsie whoopsie 0 Dec 29 11:08 _usr_share_oneconf_oneconf-service.1000.uploaded
Relevant one is here. The gist of it is:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/softwareproperties/gtk/SoftwarePropertiesGtk.py", line 1149, in detect_drivers
self.apt_cache = apt.Cache()
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/apt/cache.py", line 107, in __init__
self.open(progress)
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/apt/cache.py", line 155, in open
self._list.read_main_list()
SystemError: E:Opening /etc/apt/sources.list - ifstream::ifstream (13: Permission denied)
UserGroups: adm cdrom dip lp lpadmin plugdev sambashare scanner sudo wireshark www-data
_LogindSession: /user/1000.user/c2.session
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Title: software-properties-gtk crashed with SystemError in open(): E:Opening /etc/apt/sources.list - ifstream::ifstream (13: Permission denied)
Uname: Linux 3.16.0-50-generic x86_64
UnreportableReason: E:Opening /etc/apt/sources.list - ifstream::ifstream (13: Permission denied), E:The list of sources could not be read., E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
-3- Since USC is broken I searched all installed packages with filter software-center in synaptic and tried to reinstall them followed by reboot using various ways:
$ sudo apt-get --reinstall install software-center software-center-apt-daemon-plugins appinstall-data oneconf oneconf-common python3-oneconf python-oneconf
$ sudo aptitude reinstall software-center software-center-apt-daemon-plugins appinstall-data oneconf oneconf-common python3-oneconf python-oneconf
Both exited quietly, but nothing changed after reboot, so I tried...
-4- Rebuilding the source list:
$ sudo rm -f /var/lib/apt/lists* && sudo apt-get update
Output to stdout is here.
Beyond the stated need for a 14.04.3 CD-ROM I do not have and my rebuilding the apt source list, I seriously could use some help. Not having any update path is kinda bad.
EDIT 1:
$ ls -lA /etc/apt/sources.list
-rw-r----- 1 root root 3022 Dec 29 10:38 /etc/apt/sources.list
... had never realized before that /etc/apt/sources.list was "root root". Contents of /etc/apt/sources.list show as first uncommented line:
deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS _Trusty Tahr_ - Beta amd64 (20150805)]/ trusty main restricted
I think this must have been inserted somehow when I launched usb-creator-gtk yesterday. I do not recall at all having seen that line before in there.
