Recently I probably made a mistake by trying to install Cinnamon within Ubuntu 14. 04, following the instructions found in Linux Welt 5/2014 and using updates from linuxmint.com. Somehow this did not work. (A recent issue of PCWelt claimed there was currently no stable release of Cinnamon that worked with Ubuntu 14.04.)

When I start Ubuntu normally, go to the console and type
sudo apt-get update
after entering my password I get
E. Typ "sudo" in line 55 of the source list/etc/apt/sources. list is unknown.
E. The list of sources could not be read.

What should I do next?.
How do I correct the list of sources?
DavidWolski in Linux Welt, (p59) suggested
sudo rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
sudo apt-get clean all
sudo apt-get update
But this made no difference in my case, even when I changed /var/lib/apt/ lists/*
to etc/apt/sources/*
Should I attempt to deinstall Cinnamon?

Rogerpb

Welcome to the forums!

I recommend you slow down because you are typing dangerous commands into your computer that could ruin everything!

Who is "Linux Welt" and do you trust this person/organization with full root access to your computer by typing unknown commands?

To answer your specific question, Linux is telling you in the error message that you have ruined /etc/apt/sources.list which is an important and necessary system file. You did this yourself following the instructions from Linux Welt. Since I don't know who Linux Welt is or the exact instructions you followed, I don't know exactly what you did to the /etc/apt/sources.list file. I do know (based on the error message) that there is a syntax error on line 55.

The simple answer is "reverse the changes you made to line 55 of /etc/apt/sources.list by following the Linux Welt instructions in reverse."

However, if it is too late and you've already ruined your system by executing unknown commands, then your simplest option in my opinion is to do a fresh reinstall of Linux Mint 17 Cinammon: http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2626

1 members found this post helpful.

If you read this article on OMG! Ubuntu you will see the PPA changed for Cinammon. You can go into software sources and uncheck the PPA where you got it (which may have been this one.) then, after disabling it, rerun the update and it should fix it, If you want you can remove the cinammon you installed with apt.

If you have broken the system though, you may, as snowpine said, have to reinstall.

Snowpine,

I am very happy to contribute to the education of a senior member!

LinuxWelt is Germany`s largest Linux Magazine, which also circulates in Austria (where I live),and Switzerland. The latest issue is numbered 5/2014, Aug.-Sept and contains a live DVD wth a dozen systems on it, including Linux Mint 17 (32 and 64 bit). However, the article on installing Mint 17 warns that the version on the DVD is outdated, and recommends downloading from linuxmint.com, which I did.

Snowpine writes The simple answer is "reverse the changes you made to line 55 of /etc/apt/sources.list by following the Linux Welt instructions in reverse."

But I personally made no changes to line 55, and merely followed the instructions from linuxmint.com. So I have no idea what you mean by "following the instructions in reverse"! Entering the same instructions in reverse order?

As damage limitation, may I ask if I can access the famous line 55 and modify it? Or would that make matters worse?

Or, if I follow your suggestion of a "fresh reinstall" do you mean I should uninstall the existing installation, then install from the address you gave, or is it okay simply to overwrite the old defective version?

Regards,
Rogerpb

The terminal that you enterd has a history(remembers your commands), you can either use the arrow_up key or got to your bash_history.
Anotherthing you can do is go to linuxmint site for documentation to get a list of the mainrepos that should be in /etc/apt/sources.list & compare to yours.
Good luck!

2 members found this post helpful.

Eddy1

I am still struggling with the history command and was happy to see that I can save a list of the last x commands to a file. But I still have a lot of work to do on "history" and it is not even included in the index of my 1100 page manual on Ubuntu 14.04LTS!
I went to the linuxmint site and looked at the heading documentation, but it mainly contained user manuals in various languages, tutorials, etc. I did not know how to get a list of the main repos that should be in etc/apt/sources.list so please tell me as a newbie how I navigate to there!
Many thanks!