Synaptic Install Errors

Info from following URLs:
http://wiki.eeeuser.com/addingxandrosrepos
http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:unable_to_tparse

In my post on installing Audacity, the program used to install it was Aptitude (apt-get). Synaptic is also a package manager, linked to apt-get, but with a GUI. To run it, press Ctrl-Alt-T to bring up the terminal console and type "sudo synaptic".

Some users have reported the following (or similar) errors from Synaptic / Aptitude:
E: Unable to tparse package file /var/lib/dpkg/status (2)
E: Unable to lock the download directory

There appears to be two solutions:

1. Press Ctrl-Alt-T to bring up the terminal console.


2. Make sure Synaptic is closed and run "sudo dpkg --configure -a"


3. Within Synaptic, run Edit / Fix Broken Packages twice.
   After each of these, it would be advisable to ensure Synaptic is closed, and then run
   "sudo apt-get update" to update the package list.

Note: the error appears to be caused by use of the search facility within Synaptic. To resolve this, don't use the search and manually scroll through the sections / packages until you find what you need. Then add them in the normal way and you should be able to avoid the errors.

(^ v ^)