[conspire] Ubuntu Unable to process updates

[Rick Moen]

Quoting K Sandoval (indigo.kai at gmail.com):

> A unresolvable problem occurred while initializing the package information.
> 
> Please report this bug against the 'update-manager' package and
> include the following error message:
> 
> 'E:Read error - read (5 input/output error),E:The package lists or
> status file could not be parsed or opened.'     """

Hi, Kai.  Just as a heads-up:  You were quite understandably doing
package operations the "Ubuntu way", using the graphical
"update-manager" GNOME application.   By contrast, if I were to help you
in any depth with this problem, I'd probably end up having you work
through it with apt-get and other command-line tools.  This is because
I have those tools in front of me, and they have more predictable
behaviour, fewer dependencies, and better error reporting.

That having been said, can you report back the results of;

$  ls -l /var/cache/apt/lists

and 

$  ls -l /var/lib/dpkg/status
$  ls -l /var/lib/dpkg/available

(Those concern the "package lists" and "status file" referred to above.)

Also, what is the contents of the /etc/apt/sources.list file?

Also, what does "df -h" report?  (This gives us a quick check as to
whether you're out of disk space.)