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simon
Asked: 2020-02-20 11:04:40 +0800 CST 2020-02-20 11:04:40 +0800 CST

Error executing apt-get command: Malformed line 2 in source list

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I have a new computer and installed Linux Mint. When I tried to install npm and then install the angular cli it won't let me, I get this error:

simon@simon:~$ sudo apt-get update
[sudo] password for simon:
E: Malformed line 2 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/i2p-maintainers-i2p-bionic.list (type)
E: The list of sources could not be read.

While searching on stackoverflow in english, some answers commented to edit the file sources.listor create a new one, but it doesn't work, it doesn't give me permission neither to edit or change it.

TO UPDATE

Given the comments of several about the source.list file, I get this:

  GNU nano 2.9.3                                                            sources.list

deb cdrom:[Linux Mint 19.3 Tricia - Release amd64 20191213]/ bionic contrib main non-free

route:

root@simon:/etc/apt# l apt.conf.d/ auth.conf.d/ preferences.d/ sources.list sources.list.d/ trusted.gpg trusted.gpg~ trusted.gpg.d/ root@ simon:/etc/apt# pwd /etc/apt root@simon:/etc/apt#

Any possible solution?

linux

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The content of the file i2p-maintainers-i2p-bionic.listshould be the following:

    deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/i2p-maintainers/i2p/ubuntu bionic main
# deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/i2p-maintainers/i2p/ubuntu bionic main

    Due to some modification you have made to it, it is likely that its content has been altered causing an error in its format.

    Since it is a file from a PPA repository , you can safely delete its content without affecting the proper functioning of the computer (only affecting the update of some packages).

    After deleting it you can regenerate its repository file (to retrieve the update of said packages) with the following instruction:

    sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/i2p-maintainers-i2p-bionic.list
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:i2p-maintainers/i2p

    Or, if you want to prevent the deletion, you can generate it again as follows:

    echo 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/i2p-maintainers/i2p/ubuntu bionic main' | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/i2p-maintainers-i2p-bionic.list

    Following either of these two solutions you will be able to do sudo apt-get updatewithout complaining about this repository file.

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  2. It would be helpful if you displayed the contents of that file with cator any other program.

    Either way you could open a terminal and edit that file with:

    sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list.d/i2p-maintainers-i2p-bionic.list

    And see what happens on that line, then save it. You can use any editor or program but having superuser permissions.

    You could also see just what's on that (second) line with:

    sed -n '2p' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/i2p-maintainers-i2p-bionic.list

    Or from there with:

    tail -n +2 /etc/apt/sources.list.d/i2p-maintainers-i2p-bionic.list

    Obscure and unnecessary section.

    If you don't want to use the editor, after executing any of the above commands, you could use sedto edit the same file as follows (you should use sudo).

    sed '2s/.*/contenido que deseas sólo que cuida escapar bien los caracteres/g' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/i2p-maintainers-i2p-bionic.list

    And you will see only the content of the modified file (but the file was not modified).

    If you like what you saw, you can use the same command but with the parameter -i.bakusing it as sed -i.bak ...and the file will be modified and will be like what you saw before, but leaving another backup file with the same name but with a ".bak" extension.

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