Package dependency problems

[William Scott Lockwood III]

On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 3:48 PM, Phil <phil_lor at bigpond.com> wrote:
> 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)

I suggest doing a `sudo apt-get purge libbz2-1.0:i386` followed by
`sudo apt-get -f install` to ensure your system is in a consistent
state. Then you can attempt to reinstall the "bad" package.

--
W. Scott Lockwood III
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:  soap, ballot,
jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author)