Synaptic source package list file missing/corrupt HELP!

[ThaddeusW]

See I always was afraid of linux for one reason; if something broke on me I would be helpless. I was doing real good until I started up my system today and wanted to install some gtk stuff when I got this message from synaptic:

W: Couldn't stat source package list file: unstable/contrib Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/_mnt_iso:%5bDebian%20GNU_Linux%203.1%20r0%20%5fSar ge%5f%20-%20Official%20i386%20Binary-1%20(20050605)%5d_dists_unstable_contrib_binary-i386_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)
W: Couldn't stat source package list file: unstable/main Packages (/var/lib/apt/lists/_mnt_iso:%5bDebian%20GNU_Linux%203.1%20r0%20%5fSar ge%5f%20-%20Official%20i386%20Binary-1%20(20050605)%5d_dists_unstable_main_binary-i386_Packages) - stat (2 No such file or directory)

Now I feel helpless and this is a big problem because synaptic shows everything as installed and I have no way of adding new packages.

What do I do? Is there a backup of the file i can restore somewhere? Is there a repair method or utility? The system runs fine and maybe I can learn to live without synaptic for now but how do I install .deb files from the command line?

Any help you folks have for me is greatly appreciated.

[Vergil83]

you can install any .deb from the command line with

dpkg -i program_name.deb

To try to fix the synaptic problem....

run

apt-get -f install

then

apt-get update

Then try. If that doesn't work, post your

/etc/apt/sources.list

file

[ThaddeusW]

I got it to work after relaxing for a bit and kicking back a few beers. Turns out the repository url:
cdrom:/[Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 r0 _Sarge_ - Official i386 Binary-1 (20050605)]/
did not want to work anymore. I could not get that url to work again but I did manage to get the file:///cdrom/ to work fine. Thanks for the help and I made note of the commands you gave me for future refrence.