Bibek Paudel’s weblog

While trying to use the APT package manager, (Synaptic Package Manager’s backend), I encountered the following errors:

1. 
Reading package lists... Error!
E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room
E: Dynamic MMap ran out of room
......
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

   
   Solution:
   The reason was the cache size of my APT.
   Increase the size of your APT cache in the file /etc/apt/apt.conf. If this file doesn’t exist, create it and enter something like this:
   
APT::Cache-Limit 32454321;


   At first I had entered some lower value but that didn’t solve the error “Dynamic MMap ran out of room.” So, I increased the cache value to the above number.

2. 
Reading package lists... Error!
W: Duplicate sources.list entry

   
   Solution:
   The solution is simple enough. Check for duplicate entries in your /etc/apt/sources.list file and uncomment/remove them. Run the command apt-get update (with root privilege) after that and the error should be gone.
3. 
E: Wow, you exceeded the number of versions this APT is capable of.
....
E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.

   
   Solution:
   Apparently, there seems to be no solution. A similar bug report (Bug #280660) has been filed in launchpad but it’s unresolved as of yet.

   Interestingly, the other day, I had added Debian Lenny’s repository to my apt’s repository list. Commenting the line and running an apt-get update solved the problem for me. In a way, the error message had indicated this: “you exceeded the number of versions this APT is capable of.”

I found the last error interesting. So, thought of writing this post