I am unable to do anything with either apt-get or synaptic (or the
update manager), getting the error
abc@abc-laptop:~$ sudo apt-get upgrade
[sudo] password for abc:
Reading package lists... Error!
E: Encountered a section with no Package: header
E: Problem with MergeList
/var/lib/apt/lists/gb.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_jaunty_main_binary-i386_Pa\
ckages
E: The package lists
abc@abc-laptop:~$
This happens no matter what I try to do. Now for the weird part. When
I try to edit the Packages file listed above, I get the following in my
editor
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title> BT Home Hub</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<script type="text/javascript">var g_navitem = -1;</script>
<script type="text/javascript"> var g_focus = -1;</script>
<script type='text/javascript' src='/cgi/b/ic/util.js'></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/styles.css">
</head>
<body onLoad="preloadImgs(); setFocus();" bgcolor="#FFFFFF">
<noscript>
<h1>BT - BT Home Hub </h1>
<h4>To view the Web interface of the BT Home Hub, JavaScript must be
supported and enabled on your browser! <br><br>Please enable scripting
and refresh your browser.</h4>
</noscript>
I've omitted a lot more, but it should be quite clear that this is
nothing to do with packages.
WTF is going on here and how can I fix it? I'm running 9.04 in a
VirtualBox VM.