Malformed entry 52

General Help
#1

Re-installed Zorin lite 15.3. Downloades Realtek drivers via terminal no problem. Then attempted down load for balena etcher, and got the following:

Malformed entry 52 in list file /etc/apt/sources.list (Component)
E: The list of sources could not be read.
E: Malformed entry 52 in list file /etc/apt/sources.list (Component)
E: The list of sources could not be read.

This now appears every time I enter a command line in the terminal. Cannot install Synaptic because of this, the tool I would usually employ.

Ideas?

#2

Can you run in terminal

cat /etc/apt/sources.list

and paste the output here?

#3

Here it is:
$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list
#deb cdrom:[Zorin-OS 15.3 Lite 64bit]/ bionic main restricted

See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to

newer versions of the distribution.

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic main restricted

deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic main restricted

Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the

distribution.

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-updates main restricted

deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-updates main restricted

N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu

team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive any

review or updates from the Ubuntu security team.

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic universe

deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic universe

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-updates universe

deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-updates universe

N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu

team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to

your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in

multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu

security team.

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic multiverse

deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic multiverse

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-updates multiverse

deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-updates multiverse

N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as

extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes

newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features.

Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review

or updates from the Ubuntu security team.

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-backports main restricted universe multiverse

deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-backports main restricted universe multiverse

Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical’s

‘partner’ repository.

This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the

respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users.

deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu bionic partner

deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu bionic partner

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security main restricted

deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security main restricted

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security universe

deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security universe

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security multiverse

deb-src http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security multiverse

#4

Everything there looks normal, though I cannot directly see what is commented out and what is not.
This is because the Discourse Forum software reads the (#) differently causing it to treat that differently in your paste above.
So, let’s try commenting out the troublesome line in your sources list and see if that resolves the issue. In terminal, you can run\

sudo sed -i ‘52s/(.*)/#\1/’ /etc/apt/sources.list

to comment out line 52.
Then run

sudo apt update

1 Like
#5

Hi Aravisian. I re-installed so I didn’t need to check this out in the end. I’ll keep it in mind though. Reinstall appears to have worked. I was playing with Pop! which wanted to install on two partitions, including sda1. I’ve also cleaned that up so it may have been contributing. I’ll keep this in mind if it comes up again.