Apt giving error --fix-broken not working

[Colin Watson]

On Thu, Apr 25, 2024 at 03:41:54PM -0400, Jerry Geis wrote:
> something is messed up on apt.  fix broken does not fix anything -
> how do I fix it.

--fix-broken isn't a magic spell.  It fixes a particular kind of
problem, not anything that might possibly be broken on the system in any
way.  It won't help here.

> debconf: Perl may be unconfigured (Can't locate Cwd.pm in @INC (you may
> need to install the Cwd module) (@INC contains: /etc/perl
> /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.36.0 /usr/local/share/perl/5.36.0
> /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl5/5.36 /usr/share/perl5
> /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl-base /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.36
> /usr/share/perl/5.36 /usr/local/lib/site_perl) at
> /usr/share/perl/5.36/File/Path.pm line 6.
> BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/share/perl/5.36/File/Path.pm line
> 6.
> Compilation failed in require at (eval 1) line 3.
> BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at (eval 1) line 3.
> ) -- aborting

You have done something awful to your system somehow.  I'm not sure
exactly what.  It will be difficult to do anything at all until this
sort of thing is fixed; just hitting it with normal apt commands is not
likely to help.

Based on what you have so far, I'd suggest using "sudo dpkg-preconfigure
--help" as a barometer for how broken your system is.  Your goal is to
get it to produce a normal help message and not an error message spew
like the above.

What does "dpkg -l perl\*" say?

Can you tell us anything about the events that led up to this?

-- 
Colin Watson (he/him)                              [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]