package installation issue ...ubuntu 10.04 LTS. (> 1 package)...

[MR ZenWiz]

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 11:19 AM, Sandor, Todd (Todd)
<todd.sandor at alcatel-lucent.com> wrote:
> Hi:
>
Hi - please do not post in HTML.

> I seem to have a “broken” system where when attempting to install packages
> that should be able to be installed, I can not get them installed – details
> below.
>
> I had sent an email on the wireshark-users email list and was told my system
> is broken and the I should just need to install snmp-mibs-downloader, but
> these don’t work…
>
> Any help resolving this would be greatly appreciated…
>
> ---
> sudo apt-get install wireshark snmp-mibs-downloader
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree
> Reading state information... Done
> snmp-mibs-downloader is already the newest version.
> The following extra packages will be installed:
>   wireshark-common
> The following NEW packages will be installed:
>   wireshark wireshark-common
> 0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 85 not upgraded.
> 2 not fully installed or removed.
> Need to get 14.5MB of archives.
> After this operation, 60.2MB of additional disk space will be used.
> Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y
> Get:1 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/universe wireshark-common
> 1.2.7-1 [13.7MB]
> Get:2 http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/universe wireshark 1.2.7-1
> [794kB]
> Fetched 14.5MB in 12s
> (1,175kB/s)
> Preconfiguring packages ...
> Selecting previously deselected package wireshark-common.
> (Reading database ... 173004 files and directories currently installed.)
> Unpacking wireshark-common (from .../wireshark-common_1.2.7-1_amd64.deb) ...
> Selecting previously deselected package wireshark.
> Unpacking wireshark (from .../wireshark_1.2.7-1_amd64.deb) ...
> Processing triggers for man-db ...
> Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils ...
> Processing triggers for python-gmenu ...
> Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/desktop.en_CA.utf8.cache...
> Processing triggers for python-support ...
> Setting up postfix (2.7.0-1) ...
> adduser: No UID is available in the range 100-999 (FIRST_SYS_UID -
> LAST_SYS_UID).
> adduser: The user `postfix' was not created.
> dpkg: error processing postfix (--configure):
> subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
> dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of bsd-mailx:
> bsd-mailx depends on default-mta | mail-transport-agent; however:
>   Package default-mta is not installed.
>   Package postfix which provides default-mta is not configured yet.
>   Package mail-transport-agent is not installed.
>   Package postfix which provides mail-transport-agent is not configured yet.

It seems to me that this is the heart of your problem - it shows up in
all the other outputs you posted.

Have you tried to purge postfix, which appears to have been improperly
installed?