How to fix E: The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened in APT

Read the error message carefully. It will show a path like /var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_bionic_InRelease. This tells you which file is corrupted.

If only one or two files are mentioned, remove just those:

sudo rm /var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_bionic_InRelease

Replace the path with the actual corrupted file from your error message.

Run apt update to download fresh metadata:

sudo apt update

This command rebuilds the cache from scratch. Even though you removed files, apt will recreate them during this operation.

If the error mentions many corrupted files, it's faster to remove everything:

sudo rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
sudo apt update

Important: Remove the contents of the directory, but NOT the directory itself. The system needs the /var/lib/apt/lists/ directory to exist.

Try installing or updating a package to confirm the issue is resolved:

sudo apt install curl

If this succeeds without parsing errors, your cache is healthy.