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Go ahead, vote it as duplicate, but none of the answers provide a good explanation of what really is going on. Nor did what they suggest work. Can you please explain the elements involved in the first error at least, to the level that a human can then understand how to proceed in an informed manner? I find the command-line voodoo of existing answers not the right tactic for reliably solving problems. A tailored explanation of the elements at work is what this question is seeking.

W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/trusty/Release  Unable to find expected entry 'universe/binary-amd64/Packages' in Release file (Wrong sources.list entry or malformed file)

W: Failed to fetch http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/dists/stable/Release.gpg  Bad header line [IP: 216.58.214.78 80]

W: Failed to fetch http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/dists/stable/main/binary-amd64/Packages  404  Not Found [IP: 216.58.214.78 80]

E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
matanox
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  • "command-line voodoo"? :D –  Apr 09 '16 at 12:54
  • Indeed you will observe that most answers suggest very detailed commands with little to no explanation of why they are necessary and what they mean and do. They are often followed by "this didn't work" or "I now have a new problem don't run this". – matanox Apr 09 '16 at 13:11
  • Please provide links to the answers you have looked at that haven't worked for you. If you are unsure of what a command does, it may be useful for you to look at its manual page (man <command>). –  Apr 09 '16 at 13:56
  • Right, e.g. things like rm -r for a given directory tells one a lot in the man page. I think you've not read my question. My question asked for an explanation not for how to hack it, which might be against the nature of most answers for many kinds of questions on this site, I'm not shy to say. – matanox Apr 09 '16 at 17:42
  • You will have to give exact examples of answers and full commands, but it is likely that you are referring to removing the apt-sources lists etc, this would be so that you remove the currently possibly not working ones, so that the system on the next apt-get update replaces them with new ones. But you really have to be more specific. –  Apr 09 '16 at 17:47
  • Sorry to say, matt, but Your attitude towards community probably drives away people who might just have solution for You :) – Eska Apr 09 '16 at 19:41

1 Answers1

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The "Failed to fetch..." warning can be either a real problem with your sources.list or a temporary issue with the remote server or your connection to the server, depending on the details. It's not uncommon for these warnings to occur from time to time because the internet is not 100% reliable. I would only worry about these warnings if they persist for some number of days.

In the case of your the first warning (the archive.ubuntu.com), it is saying that it cannot find the entry "universe/binary-amd64/Packages" in the listing at http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/trusty/Release. However, if you go to that page in your browser and search for that entry, you will see that it is there.

I have personally being having a lot of problems with the archive.ubuntu.com server over the past week, so I switched my software mirror and have not been having issues since then. You can do that from System Settings > Software & Updates under the "Ubuntu Software" tab. See this article: http://www.asim.pk/2014/05/25/how-to-change-download-mirror-in-ubuntu/

Regarding the warnings about the Google Chrome repository, the first warning says there is something wrong with the response the server is sending in to your computer's request (the "header" portion of the server's response is not correct), and the second one is saying that the server does not have the file your computer is requesting. Both of them are providing you with the IP address the request was sent to, so you could use an online DNS lookup to make sure your computer is trying to connect to the right address.

blendenzo
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