Package dependency problems

[Phil]

On 24/05/13 03:43, Nils Kassube wrote:
> Sabniveesu Shashank wrote:
>> On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 4:08 PM, Phil <phil_lor at bigpond.com> wrote:
>>> Thank you for reading my first posting to this list.
>>>
>>> Any attempt to install any package is prevented because of a list of
>>> dependencies.
>>>
>>> It has been suggested that I post the output of dpkg --configure -a
>>> and this is the result:
>>>
>>> phil at Asus:~$ sudo dpkg --configure -a
>>>
>>> dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libc6:i386:
>>>   libc6:i386 depends on debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0; however:
>>>    Package debconf is not installed.
>>>    Package debconf-2.0 is not installed.
>>>
>>>   libc6:i386 depends on libgcc1; however:
>>>    Package libgcc1 is not installed.
>>>
>>> dpkg: error processing libc6:i386 (--configure):
>>>   dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
>>>
>>> dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of multiarch-
> support:
>>>   multiarch-support depends on libc6 (>= 2.13-5); however:
>>>    Package libc6:i386 is not configured yet.
>>>
>>> dpkg: error processing multiarch-support (--configure):
>>>   dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
>>>
>>> Errors were encountered while processing:
>>>   libc6:i386
>>>   multiarch-support
>>>
>>> Is this a known problem?
>>>
>>> --
>>> Regards,
>>> Phil
>>>
>>> --
>>
>> Use 'sudo apt-get install -f'. Restart your system. This should solve
>> any missing/broken packages
>>
>> As for the reason, It depends on what you recently installed and
>> incompletely uninstalled..
>
> No, that is unfortunately not the solution - I had suggested that
> command previously (on Kubuntu-users) and it didn't work either. The
> problem is the missing debconf package which seems to be vital to
> install anything. It seems like Phil has the problem that he can't
> install debconf because debconf is missing.
>

As Nils said, he had already made that suggestion and so, if it helps, 
here is the result:

phil at Asus:~$ sudo apt-get install -f
[sudo] password for phil:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
   apt-utils debconf debconf-i18n dpkg gcc-4.7-base libapt-inst1.5 
libapt-pkg4.12 libbz2-1.0
   libdb5.1 libgcc1 liblocale-gettext-perl liblzma5 libselinux1 libstdc++6
   libtext-charwidth-perl libtext-iconv-perl libtext-wrapi18n-perl 
perl-base tar zlib1g
Suggested packages:
   xz-utils debconf-doc debconf-utils whiptail dialog gnome-utils 
libterm-readline-gnu-perl
   libgtk2-perl libnet-ldap-perl libqtgui4-perl libqtcore4-perl apt 
bzip2 ncompress
The following NEW packages will be installed:
   apt-utils debconf debconf-i18n dpkg gcc-4.7-base libapt-inst1.5 
libapt-pkg4.12 libbz2-1.0
   libdb5.1 libgcc1 liblocale-gettext-perl liblzma5 libselinux1 libstdc++6
   libtext-charwidth-perl libtext-iconv-perl libtext-wrapi18n-perl 
perl-base tar zlib1g
0 upgraded, 20 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0 B/6,630 kB of archives.
After this operation, 22.4 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
E: Cannot get debconf version. Is debconf installed?
debconf: apt-extracttemplates failed: No such file or directory
dpkg: regarding .../libbz2-1.0_1.0.6-4_i386.deb containing 
libbz2-1.0:i386, pre-dependency problem:
  libbz2-1.0 pre-depends on multiarch-support
   multiarch-support is unpacked, but has never been configured.

dpkg: error processing 
/var/cache/apt/archives/libbz2-1.0_1.0.6-4_i386.deb (--unpack):
  pre-dependency problem - not installing libbz2-1.0:i386
Errors were encountered while processing:
  /var/cache/apt/archives/libbz2-1.0_1.0.6-4_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

-- 
Regards,
Phil