APT – Package DBus is Not Configured Yet

12.04aptaptitude

While attempting to upgrade (sudo apt-get upgrade) Ubuntu 12.04, I had a pair of packages that would throw the following apt-get install errors for the dbus dependency:

dpkg: error processing dbus (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of accountsservice:
 accountsservice depends on dbus; however:
  Package dbus is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing accountsservice (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.
                                                                                                          Errors were encountered while processing:
 dbus
 accountsservice
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Best Answer

The solutions provided for similar issues of dpkg returning an error is to use:

dpkg --configure -a
apt-get install -f

Both did not resolve the issue and produced the same error output. In some cases, aptitude may be a better option to use than apt-get. The solution is to use aptitude install -f:

aptitude install -f

Explanation: As a special case, aptitude install with no arguments will act on any stored/pending actions. When the -f option is given, aptitude will be more aggressive when attempting to fix the dependencies of broken packages, even if it means ignoring the actions requested on the command line.

Related Question