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I was trying to run: sudo apt-get update

The response I received was:

E: Type 'sudo' is not known on line 1 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list
E: The list of sources could not be read.

My questions:

  1. What is sources.list?
  2. What happened?
  3. How do I repair/fix this? I have been using Ubuntu 20.04 and thought I would try upgrade to 22.04. I do not know that much about the inner workings of Ubuntu. I am past 60 and find it difficult to know the command line workings unless I can find it printed somewhere. I cannot remember seeing this anywhere. Can you help?
muru
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tgraves2
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    The `/etc/apt/sources.list` file contains a list of repositories (software sources) where software packages can be found. Entries found in `/etc/apt/sources.list.d/` are added to those sources. Those are run when you run `sudo apt update` which updates your system's list of software packages available from those sources. The upgrades of packages only occurs if you `sudo apt upgrade` or `sudo apt full-upgrade`. FYI: The `/etc/apt/sources.list.d/` directory is empty on a clean install; so its only populated by files you add. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/Ubuntu – guiverc Oct 11 '22 at 02:48
  • That line will have been edited, or added by yourself, where something went wrong and the command `sudo` (*which isn't a valid entry in that file*) ended up inside the file. You can see when it was last edited using `stat /etc/apt/sources.list` and its line 1 that contains that invalid info. Either that line needs correction, removal and then the rest of the file explore for error(s). Restoring default maybe easier. – guiverc Oct 11 '22 at 02:53

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