installing the latest R version (2.13.0) on Ubuntu 11.04

Question

I just upgraded my Ubuntu desktop 10.10 to 11.04. I everything works fine except when trying to update the current R 2.12.1 to R 2.13.0.

I followed the readme:

http://cran.r-project.org/bin/Linux/Ubuntu/README

and added

deb http://cran.xl-mirror.nl/bin/Linux/Ubuntu natty/
deb-src http://cran.xl-mirror.nl/bin/Linux/Ubuntu natty/
deb http://nl.archive.Ubuntu.com/Ubuntu/ natty-backports restricted main multiverse universe

to my

/etc/apt/sources.list

and also added

The Ubuntu archives on CRAN are signed with the key of "Michael Rutter " with key ID E084DAB9. You can fetch this key with

  gpg --keyserver keyserver.Ubuntu.com --recv-key E084DAB9

and then feed it to apt-key with

   gpg -a --export E084DAB9 | sudo apt-key add -

Which appears in the synaptic package manager (so I assume it worked).

but when running sudo apt-get update I obtain an error saying that:

Reading package lists... Error!

E: Encountered a section with no Package: header E: Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/cran.xl-mirror.nl_bin_linux_ubuntu_natty_en E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened. E: _cache->open() failed, please report.

and

An unresolvable problem occurred while initializing the package information.

Please report this bug against the 'update-manager' package and include the following error message:

'E:Encountered a section with no Package: header, E:Problem with MergeList /> var/lib/apt/lists/cran.xl-mirror.nl_bin_linux_ubuntu_natty_en, E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.'

how can I solve this? I am not an experienced Ubuntu user but have been using R on Mac and Windows.

Answer 1

I suspect the CRAN mirrors do not yet have a line for 'natty'. Just make it

deb http://cran.xl-mirror.nl/bin/linux/ubuntu maverick/

for now and you should be fine. This would have been a good question for the r-sig-debian list which is for questions regarding R on Debian/Ubuntu.