Uma beta reports our "apt configuration is corrupt"

[ripleymj]

Uma beta reports our "apt configuration is corrupt" via tray icon. No further details are given yet. Possibly not even our problem to solve.

[ripleymj]

On 2nd glance, mintupdate appears to die with the following error

-- Exception occurred in the refresh thread:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/linuxmint/mintUpdate/mintUpdate.py", line 830, in run
    self.application.builder.get_object("label_error_details").set_text(error_msg)
TypeError: Argument 1 does not allow None as a value

but the problem resolves itself after the first apt-get update is run manually.

Edit: it's the removal of /var/lib/apt/lists/ that triggers the problem, not the apt-get clean we run. Just removing the contents of lists/ also triggers the problem.

[ripleymj]

Reported as linuxmint/mint20.2-beta#7

[ripleymj]

With mintupdate 5.7.7, the crash no longer happens, but mintupdate still gets itself confused with the missing /var/lib/apt/lists/lock file. With the lock file in place but the lists missing, it still reports an error, but will eventually resolves itself once it resyncs package lists.