[wellylug] dpkg stuff

[E Chalaron]

Hi Ewen & al.,

Well I am for a reinstall.
The mix of systems might well have been from trying to install either 
skype or googleearth which if I remember run on i386 libs.

Many thanks again
E



On 27/03/14 20:35, Ewen McNeill wrote:
> On 2014-03-27 15:20 , E Chalaron wrote:
>> *E: Cannot get debconf version. Is debconf installed?**
>> **debconf: apt-extracttemplates failed: No such file or directory*
>> dpkg: regarding .../libgcc1_1%3a4.7.2-5_amd64.deb containing
>> libgcc1:amd64, pre-dependency problem:
>>   libgcc1 pre-depends on multiarch-support
>>    multiarch-support is unpacked, but has never been configured.
>
> It would appear that the upgrade of things got interrupted after 
> replacing some things, but before the new things had been fully 
> installed.  And that at least some of those things are pretty key 
> packages to the package archive/installation process.  I've had that 
> happen a couple of times on tiny systems (small VMs) that ran out of 
> disk space (eg, in a partition -- small /boot can be particularly 
> problematic, especially with Ubuntu wanting to keep every kernel for N 
> years installed...).  But there might be some other causes too.
>
> If you did want to try recovering I'd suggest:
> - checking that you do actually have enough free disk space in _all_ 
> partitions (including /boot) to be sure of installing some new things; 
> if not especially with boot removing _a _few_ _older_ linux-image 
> packages can help: dpkg --purge linux-image-VERSION
>
> (if you do have to remove things to make space, make sure (a) that you 
> don't reboot until you're done with the rest of the steps, and (b) 
> that you definitely run "update-grub" before you reboot. Otherwise 
> your next reboot will have to be from CD to do those steps...)
>
> - then with that free space try running:
>
> dpkg --configure --pending
>
> to see if dpkg will still run enough to actually configure the 
> "multiarch-support" that is unpacked, but not configured (and 
> presumably a bunch of other things)
>
> - then try:
>
> apt-get -f install
>
> to see if after configuring those things, it can manage to 
> install/uninstall the remaining things that it was half way through, 
> to get a combination of things that will actually work together as a 
> working system
>
> - and then perhaps you'd be in a safe position to try:
>
> apt-get update
> apt-get upgrade
>
> to carry on with where you were up to.
>
> Ewen
>
> PS: Given that particular thing being required, and installed but not 
> configured, I have a sneaking suspicion that you're (deliberately or 
> otherwise) trying to run a mixed i386/amd64 system.  Which is 
> definitely not the path to maximum simplicity. (Or minimum space usage 
> -- you end up with two of several things, like library files.)  If you 
> followed some generic instructions on the Internet you might want to 
> double check that you're actually using the same architecture as your 
> current system for the new packages you've tried to install.
>
>