[gNewSense-users] I think my update manager has crashed - SOS

[andrei raevsky]

Hi,

For a while already the update manager's icon, when pressed, used to load synaptic rather than the update manager.  I then manually closed synaptic and launched the update manager and the system was updated.  Now this morning when I got the "updates available icon" I clicked on it, synaptic was lauched, I closed it, then I manually lauched the update manager and I clicked 'install updates'.  It downladed them, installed them, and announced that the very same 8 packages were still updatable.  I repeated the operation 2 more times.  Then I tried this:

address@hidden:~$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Password:
Get:1 http://us.archive.gnewsense.org deltad Release.gpg [191B]
Hit http://us.archive.gnewsense.org deltad Release
Get:2 http://us.security.gnewsense.org deltad-security Release.gpg [191B]
Ign http://us.archive.gnewsense.org deltad/main Packages
Hit http://us.security.gnewsense.org deltad-security Release
Ign 
http://us.archive.gnewsense.org deltad/universe Packages
Ign http://us.archive.gnewsense.org
 deltad/main Sources
Ign http://us.archive.gnewsense.org deltad/universe Sources
Hit http://us.archive.gnewsense.org deltad/main Packages
Ign http://us.security.gnewsense.org deltad-security/main Packages
Hit http://us.archive.gnewsense.org deltad/universe Packages
Hit 
http://us.archive.gnewsense.org deltad/main Sources
Ign http://us.security.gnewsense.org
 deltad-security/universe Packages
Ign http://us.security.gnewsense.org
 deltad-security/main Sources
Hit http://us.archive.gnewsense.org deltad/universe Sources
Ign http://us.security.gnewsense.org deltad-security/universe Sources
Hit http://us.security.gnewsense.org deltad-security/main Packages
Hit http://us.security.gnewsense.org deltad-security/universe Packages
Hit http://us.security.gnewsense.org deltad-security/main Sources
Hit http://us.security.gnewsense.org deltad-security/universe Sources
Fetched 2B in 1s (2B/s)
Reading package lists... Done
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  bind9-host dnsutils libbind9-0 libdns21 libisc11 libisccc0 libisccfg1
  liblwres9
8 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/1329kB of archives.
After unpacking 4096B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
dpkg: parse error, in file `/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 24129:
 invalid package name (character `' not allowed - only letters, digits and -+._ allowed)
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)
address@hidden:~$

Any ideas as to what is going on here?  WTF is this weird dpkg parse error?!

How do I fix my computer to get the updates and synaptic/update manager running again?

Many thanks,

Andrei