Problems installing software and/or updates. Heron version 8.04

[Nigel Henry]

On Monday 06 October 2008 16:16, Derek Broughton wrote:
> Glenn wrote:
> > Hello friends,
> >
> > When trying to install software using "update manager" or "add/remove" I
> > get the following error:
> >
> > E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'dpkg --configure -a" to
> > correct the problem.
> > E: _cache->open()failed, please report.
> >
> > Any help is much appreciated.
>
> Why do we get this question so often?  Why don't people just follow the
> instruction?

I suppose it may have something to do with a newbies fear of the CLI. Normally 
running dpkg --configure -a fixes the problem, but you're not told to re-run 
apt-get dist-upgrade again afterwards, otherwise the rest of the packages 
that were in the process of being installed won't be.
>
> [and why, for that matter, doesn't update-manager run the command itself
> when it knows it's necessary]

Perhaps because there may be more complications, that just running dpkg 
--configure -a can't fix. The other day on a new machine that I'd built, I 
was doing the updates for HH. The machine has a habit of totally locking up 
for no apparent reason. The updates had finished downloading, and installing 
them had just started when the machine locked up, but there is some output 
below from KDE's Konsole after I'd rebooted. Of course further instructions 
were given when dpkg --configure -a failed, and the problem was resolved.

djmons at djmons-desktop:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
[sudo] password for djmons:
E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'dpkg --configure -a' to 
correct the problem.
djmons at djmons-desktop:~$ sudo dpkg --configure -a
dpkg: error processing libc6-dev (--configure):
 Package is in a very bad inconsistent state - you should
 reinstall it before attempting configuration.
Errors were encountered while processing:
 libc6-dev
djmons at djmons-desktop:~$ sudo apt-get install --reinstall libc6-dev
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  libc6 libc6-i686
Suggested packages:
  glibc-doc manpages-dev
The following packages will be upgraded:
  libc6 libc6-dev libc6-i686
3 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 13 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/8894kB of archives.
After this operation, 4096B disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
Preconfiguring packages ...
(Reading database ... 119529 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace libc6-dev 2.7-10ubuntu3 
(using .../libc6-dev_2.7-10ubuntu4_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement libc6-dev ...
Preparing to replace libc6 2.7-10ubuntu3 
(using .../libc6_2.7-10ubuntu4_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement libc6 ...
Setting up libc6 (2.7-10ubuntu4) ...

Processing triggers for libc6 ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
(Reading database ... 119529 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace libc6-i686 2.7-10ubuntu3 
(using .../libc6-i686_2.7-10ubuntu4_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement libc6-i686 ...
Setting up libc6-dev (2.7-10ubuntu4) ...
Setting up libc6-i686 (2.7-10ubuntu4) ...

Processing triggers for libc6 ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
djmons at djmons-desktop:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  gdb kio-umountwrapper language-pack-en language-pack-kde-en
  libfreetype6 libfreetype6-dev libsmbclient libxml2 python-libxml2
  rdesktop samba-common smbclient sudo
13 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/14.1MB of archives.
After this operation, 1974kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
Preconfiguring packages ...
(Reading database ... 119529 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace language-pack-en 1:8.04+20080708 
(using .../language-pack-en_1%3a8.04+20080805_all.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement language-pack-en ...
Replacing files in old package language-pack-en-base ...
Preparing to replace language-pack-kde-en 1:8.04+20080708 (using 

And the install continued on with not problems.

You can get some "Interesting" problems with package managers from time to 
time.
> --
> derek

Nigel.