Ubuntu – Ubuntu 15.04, cannot install skype

skype

I tried proposed solutions found here:

and other places, but still no luck. My system was upgraded from Ubuntu 14.04 and Skype worked fine. Once I upgraded, Skype disappeared and I cannot install it. So after attempting a bunch of solutions found on the forum, I am still at the same place so when I enter this:

sudo apt-get install skype skype-bin

I get this

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 skype-bin:i386 : Depends: libqtwebkit4:i386 (>= 2.2~2011week36) but it  is not going to be installed
                  Depends: libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 but it is not going to be  installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

If I enter this:

sudo apt-get install libqtwebkit4:i386

I get this

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libqtwebkit4:i386 : Depends: libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 but it is not going to be installed or
                          libgl1:i386
                 Depends: libqt4-opengl:i386 (>= 4:4.5.3) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

If I do this, note it is the same as above, but without :i386

sudo apt-get install libqtwebkit4

I get this:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
libqtwebkit4 is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

Best Answer

Your packages are likely broken.

Proof that your packages are broken

I tested this with two different 64-bit 15.04 installs:

A) fresh 15.04 install (just did it this week) - installing skype works flawlessly with a standard approach of adding the partner repository then apt-get install skype.

B) fresh but overused 15.04 install - this box had a lot of additional software installed (over 15GB). It wasn't upgraded from a previous install like yours. I had exactly the same errors as you. None of the usual fixes out there would work (apt-get -f install / clean / autoclean / whatever - none worked)

This shows that the problem is with your packages. I even tried aptitude to solve the conflicts, but it wanted to uninstall over 500 packages from my system! (no, thanks!).

Possible Solutions

Do a fresh install (15.10 will be available within a few days!)

Try to use aptitude to see if it can give you a better solution in your specific case. I'll improve this post with examples upon request.

Install all dependencies by hand to get Skype to run on your messed up 15.04 install (its probably not your fault it got messed up - this is likely a bug). I tested this and it works, so that I have Skype on both (A) and (B) above. Two ways you can attempt this:
1. apt-get install recusivelly all packages above, forcing install when necessary, even though apt-get is complaining. I couldn't get this to work.
or
1. (worked for me) Install each library by hand by fetching it from the repository. It is more of a craft to get this right. However, it might be worthwhile since Skype is so central that you might well need it very badly. I will describe this in a couple more edits, but basically involves using ldd, apt-file find, apt-get download package_name:i386, dpkg -x package_name*.deb to decompress, then an ldconfig trick using /etc/ld.so.conf.d. I could just post all libs directly to you, but its 600MB worth of *.so's....

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Cannot install Adobe or Skype due to ia32-libs error

I had a similar problem with broken dependencies when trying to install wine and acroread, and a complaint when trying to install ia32-libs-multiarch, just after upgrading to 12.04 from 11.04 (passing over 11.10). It seems that some ppa's I had in 11.04 installed newer versions of applications in the system. After upgrading, the remains of these apps seemed to do some mess in the dependencies.

The solution that seems to work (until now), was found on a german ubuntu board (http://forum.ubuntuusers.de, posts from user Lasall):

First a downgrade is required and done with the following: create the 'preferences' file:

sudo vi /etc/apt/preferences

and insert the following lines:

Package: *       
Pin: release a=precise*
Pin-Priority: 2012

Pin-Priority must be greater than 1000.

Then you may downgrade the offending applications with:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Then you may install packages that complained about dependencies, like sudo apt-get install ia32-libs-multiarch, or sudo apt-get install ia32-libs.

Finally, you should remove the file you just created:

sudo rm /etc/apt/preferences

because else no new updates would be found.

Hope this helps you too!

Ubuntu – Skype installation problem 12.04

Hi there has been several updates to skype in span of a day, try to do a --purge remove skype and reinstall. you can also install skype-bin if this doesn't work. It will give you latest skype.