Linux distros come with lots of possibilities to develop new innovative ideas, however, while doing that you may face some errors, especially the newbies, who are yet developing skills to become a proficient Linux users… Out of hundreds of errors that may appear in Linux OS due to any bug or because of our mistakes, recently I faced the one: here is that:
W: Unable to parse package file /var/lib/dpkg/status (1)
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
W: _cache->open() failed, please report.
I got this error because, by mistake, I deleted the Status file, the reason for this error in your case might be different.
Hence, if you have it then you can follow the given commands in your Ubuntu Terminal:
There is a Status backup file available under the Var directory. Let’s first unpack that:
sudo gunzip /var/backups/dpkg.status.*.gz
Move the Status file to /var/lib/dpkg/
sudo cp /var/backups/dpkg.status.0 /var/lib/dpkg/status
Run system update
sudo apt update
Now you will not have the error on your system, however, some people may face the same kind of error but in a different context.
For example:
E: Unable to parse package file /var/lib/apt/lists
/var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_xxx
E: The package lists or status files could not be parsed or opened.
or
E: Unable to parse package file /var/lib/apt/extended_states (1)
If you are facing the above error then to resolve that, we can use the following commands:
cd /var/lib/apt/lists/
sudo rm -r /var/lib/apt/lists/*
sudo apt update
Actually, /var/lib/apt is the directory where the cache of the APT package manager is stored hence after performing the changes we want, running the system update command is necessary to rebuild the cache.
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Thank you! You just saved me hours of headache and trial and error.
You rock!