Software Updater is not starting in Ubuntu 14.04

Question

When I click on the Software Updater it just won't start and restarting the computer doesn't help either.

Doing sudo ap-get update in a terminal gives following error :

Reading package lists... Error!
E: Encountered a section with no Package: header
E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_trusty-security_main_i18n_Translation-en
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.
muddassir@Nexus:~$ Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/appgrid/appdata.py", line 229, in <module>
    rebuild_db()
  File "/usr/share/appgrid/appdata.py", line 119, in rebuild_db
    from appdata.apps.aptapp import AptApp, all_apt_pkgnames
  File "/usr/share/appgrid/appdata/apps/aptapp.py", line 10, in <module>
    cache = Cache()
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/apt/cache.py", line 107, in __init__
    self.open(progress)
  File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/apt/cache.py", line 151, in open
    self._cache = apt_pkg.Cache(progress)
SystemError: E:Encountered a section with no Package: header, E:Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_trusty-security_main_i18n_Translation-en, E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

And using sudo update-manager, gives the same error as above.

Answer 1

A simple solution, that fixes corrupted apt-get files:

$ sudo rm -rvf /var/lib/apt/lists/* //remove your repo sources list files.
$ sudo apt-get update        // update your repositories list again