Ubuntu – Why does aptitude insist on installing packages

aptitude

Why does aptitude want to install so many packages when I simply run the following?

sudo aptitude install

I'd rather not provide specific packages it wants to install because this has happened plenty of times in the past (though I'm not entirely sure how I've fixed it in the past).

Any ideas?

Best Answer

From the aptitude man page :

As a special case, “install” with no arguments will act on any stored/pending actions.

In other words, you tried to install those packages earlier (or they were brought as dependencies), yet something went wrong (or the process was interrupted) and it couldn't finish. aptitude is just trying to finish what it started. The operations may also concern updates, package removals or any kind of internal, pending operation.

Another interesting man page excerpt you might want to know about :

Once you enter Y at the final confirmation prompt, the “install” command will modify aptitude's stored information about what actions to perform. Therefore, if you issue (e.g.) the command “aptitude install foo bar” and then abort the installation once aptitude has started downloading and installing packages, you will need to run “aptitude remove foo bar” to cancel that order.

In other words, if those packages are of no interest to you, calling remove for them might purge the pending operations queue (the aptitude's stored information).

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Ignoring specific unmet dependencies with aptitude

EDIT: Ok, as noted below, the "rejecting the removal..." thing in aptitude does not work - this is what did manage to work for me, though...

While looking for, say, Package: ipe, one may hit files such as:

$ grep -r 'Package: ipe' /var/lib/apt/lists/
...
/var/lib/apt/lists/archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_natty_universe_binary-i386_Packages:Package: ipe
...
/var/lib/apt/lists/old-releases.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_natty_universe_binary-i386_Packages:Package: ipe
...

... however, these are not right - apparently, the runtime information for apt-get etc. is stored in /var/lib/dpkg/status ( via How do I fix a "Problem with MergeList" or "status file could not be parsed" error when trying to do an update? ).

So, I opened that file via sudo nano /var/lib/dpkg/status, and looked up "Package: ipe", and then tried to comment the texlive-latex-base portion of "Depends:" - first by putting it in a separate line, at commenting it with a number sign/hash #. Note that this does not work - first you'll get errors like:

dpkg: error: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 8140 package 'ipe':
 field name `#,' must be followed by colon
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

... then if you try to add that colon, as in #:, you'll get:

dpkg: error: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 8141 package 'ipe':
 user-defined field name `#' too short
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

Apparently, these files do not use comments; and they seem to be documented in Debian Policy Manual - Control files and their fields. Then I found:

#353040 - [DPKG-DEB] don't be so noisy about user defined fields in DEBIAN/control - Debian Bug report logs

The right way to include a field in the .deb is to use fields named "XB-*".

... so, basically, instead of using a comment character to "comment out" - I just used an user-defined field, instead, which I arbitrarily called XB-Ignore:; so that portion of /var/lib/dpkg/status ended up looking like this:

Package: ipe
...
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4), libcairo2 (>= 1.2.4), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1), libipe7.0.10, liblua5.1-0, libqtcore4 (>= 4:4.6.$
XB-Ignore: , texlive-latex-base, gsfonts
...

With this change saved, I could perform the install using apt-get directly, without a problem:

$ sudo apt-get install dropbox
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Suggested packages:
  python-gpgme
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  dropbox
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0 B/93,0 kB of archives.
After this operation, 410 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Selecting previously deselected package dropbox.
...
Setting up dropbox (1.6.1) ...
Processing triggers for menu ...

I'll just note that /var/lib/dpkg/status is not a persistant file - in fact, right after the apt-get install, if you check the file again, Depends: and XB-Ignore: will no longer be on neighboring lines (as they were originally, as shown on the snippet above)!

While the question on ignoring the unmet dependency is ~~still open~~ noted above - it turns out I did misinterpret what these "new solutions" are: it is the choices you're offered by aptitude if you answer "no" to the "Accept this solution?" question:

...
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  ipe: Depends: texlive-latex-base but it is not going to be installed.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

     Remove the following packages:
1)     ipe                         


Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] r 1
Rejecting the removal of ipe
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

     Remove the following packages:
1) R   ipe                         


Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] n                      # <==== here not accepting above solution
The following actions will resolve these dependencies: # <==== new solution offered here:

      Install the following packages:           
1)      lmodern [2.004.1-3 (natty)]             
2)      luatex [0.65.0-1ubuntu3 (natty)]        
3)      tex-common [2.09 (natty)]               
4)      texlive-base [2009-11 (natty)]          
5)      texlive-binaries [2009-8ubuntu2 (natty)]
6)      texlive-common [2009-11 (natty)]        
7)      texlive-doc-base [2009-2 (natty)]       
8)      texlive-latex-base [2009-11 (natty)]    
9)      texlive-latex-base-doc [2009-11 (natty)]
10)     texlive-luatex [2009-11 (natty)]        

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] r 1
Rejecting the installation of lmodern version 2.004.1-3 (natty)
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

      Install the following packages:           
1)  R   lmodern [2.004.1-3 (natty)]             
2)      luatex [0.65.0-1ubuntu3 (natty)]        
...

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] r 10
Rejecting the installation of texlive-luatex version 2009-11 (natty)
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

      Install the following packages:           
1)  R   lmodern [2.004.1-3 (natty)]             
2)  R   luatex [0.65.0-1ubuntu3 (natty)]        
3)  R   tex-common [2.09 (natty)]               
4)  R   texlive-base [2009-11 (natty)]          
5)  R   texlive-binaries [2009-8ubuntu2 (natty)]
6)  R   texlive-common [2009-11 (natty)]        
7)  R   texlive-doc-base [2009-2 (natty)]       
8)  R   texlive-latex-base [2009-11 (natty)]    
9)  R   texlive-latex-base-doc [2009-11 (natty)]
10) R   texlive-luatex [2009-11 (natty)]        


Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] n
*** No more solutions available ***

The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

      Install the following packages:           
1)  R   lmodern [2.004.1-3 (natty)]             
2)  R   luatex [0.65.0-1ubuntu3 (natty)]        
3)  R   tex-common [2.09 (natty)]               
4)  R   texlive-base [2009-11 (natty)]          
5)  R   texlive-binaries [2009-8ubuntu2 (natty)]
6)  R   texlive-common [2009-11 (natty)]        
7)  R   texlive-doc-base [2009-2 (natty)]       
8)  R   texlive-latex-base [2009-11 (natty)]    
9)  R   texlive-latex-base-doc [2009-11 (natty)]
10) R   texlive-luatex [2009-11 (natty)]        


Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] y
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  dropbox lmodern{a} luatex{a} tex-common{a} texlive-base{a} texlive-binaries{a} texlive-common{a} 
  texlive-doc-base{a} texlive-latex-base{a} texlive-latex-base-doc{a} texlive-luatex{a} 
The following partially installed packages will be configured:
  ipe 
0 packages upgraded, 11 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 87,4 MB of archives. After unpacking 181 MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] n
Abort.

So yeah - if I keep on rejecting all solutions, at the end I'll get "*** No more solutions available ***", and aptitude can either go with those solutions, or abort - but unfortunately cannot ignore them with this technique...

Ubuntu – Unable to install python-dev on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS using aptitude and apt-get

One of my fresh installs have these repositories. You appear to be missing some update repositories.

I placed * stars at the ones I don't see from your list.

apollo@apollo:~$ egrep -v '^#|^ *$' /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial main restricted
* /etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates main restricted
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial universe
* /etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates universe
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial multiverse
* /etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates multiverse
* /etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-backports main restricted universe multiverse
* /etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security main restricted
* /etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security universe
* /etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-security multiverse
grep: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*: No such file or directory
apollo@apollo:~$

Try at least adding the update repositories... then run:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Ignoring specific unmet dependencies with aptitude

Ubuntu – Unable to install python-dev on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS using aptitude and apt-get

Related Question