How to fix "Failed to download repository information" error while updating?

Question

How can I fix this? I can't update anything at all.

I've tried to switch to my best server in the options.

When I do sudo apt-get update, this is what I get:

W: Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/quantal/Release Unable to find expected entry 'universe/binary-1386/Packages' in Release file (Wrong sources.list entry or malformed file) E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.*

When I do sudo apt-get upgrade, I get this:

Reading package lists... Done

Building dependency tree

Reading state information... Done

0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

the contents of my source.list:

deb http://ubuntu.mirror.rafal.ca/ubuntu/ quantal universe restricted main

....update: when I update, it looks for 'universe/binary-1386/Packages'

however, if I go to: ubuntu.mirror.rafal.ca/ubuntu/dists/quantal/Release with Google Chrome, I see that the file is actually named "universe/binary-i386/Packages" (it's with an i, not a 1) . how can I fix this and make it expect the proper package?

Answer 1

It sounds like you've run dpkg --add-architecture 1386 at some point. If dpkg --print-foreign-architectures shows 1386, running dpkg --remove-architecture 1386 should fix the problem.

Answer 2

I just disabled the "ppa" lines in the "Software & Updates" app under the "Other Software" tab. It works fine now. It turns out that when I installed the Razer keyboard software (and google earth), that's when I started getting the error message described above.