When I try to see if updates are available vial the application cataloge, I click on Browse for installable applications, I get a box asking "Refresh package list?". I click OK, it download 3K of something, attempts to refresh the applications list, and finally gives me the message

"Unable to refresh list. Last refreshed list inshown." This is March 22.

This happened to me once before I and I ended up uninstalling several things (not because of the problem) and suddenly it could refresh again.

Any clue as to what is happening and how I can fix this?

-- rhackenb

try to do this:

rm /var/lib/apt/lists/*dists*


cd /var/lib/dpkg
cp status-old status

This worked for me.
Also, verify your sources list, it could be an error.

You can check the application manager under tools then log and see which of the repo that is giving the error. Then uncheck that reposistory in the app catalog to disable the offending repo.

I had http://maemo-hackers.org/apt in my application catalogue and the log flagged that as the problem. I disabled it and now can refresh.

Thanks for the help, everyone.

-- rhackenb

I discovered what I was doing wrong. The url for the repository was correct but I had bora instead of mistral for the distribution and user instead of main for the components. Frankly I'm confused about which distributions my n800 accepts. When do I put bora and when do I put mistral? Also, what is the significants of 'components'?

--rhackenb

Use bora when you can (i.e. if there is a bora, and if that repo contains the app you want), and mistral if you have no bora alternative. The mistral distro is for OS2006 (770), bora is for OS2007 (N800).

'components' is the name of a subdirectory in the repository. The reason for having this stems from Debian, where you would typically have 'main', 'contrib', 'non-free', and you could select all (with 3 different entries in the program catalogue list), or a subset (e.g. avoiding the non-free one if you don't want apps with a non-free license). So, 'user' is simply the name of the single subdirectory and the choice of name is pretty much arbitrary. As you have noticed, sometimes it's 'main' or something else.