Cannot Run Update Manager

[candra2]

When I go to thread tools it only show me three options - not five. When five optinos are displayed then one is mark as solved, but that option is not on my thread tools menu - why I do not know.

Can you please mark the thread as solved or inform me what / how I can get that option in my thread tools drop down menu.

thanks

[ubentobox]

I had actually ran into this issue with 12.04 before. While I am at work I cannot give you the direct path, I believe the /etc/environments had an errant '$' in the paths to install. I had not touched the file and it was a fresh install from the website, but once I removed this I was able to update my machine for the first time since I had installed it. Just something to look out for.

[bapoumba]

Wow
I've marked your thread as solved.

In the future, make sure to be careful when installing 3rd party packages, in particular during a release upgrade.

[candra2]

Thanks for marking my thread as solved...

I shall certainly be careful about 3rd party installs in the future; in my several years (6 or more) of running Ubuntu I never encountered such problems with installs. I will certainly be wary from now forward.

Thanks again for your help and solutions!!

[bapoumba]

You are welcome candra2. Please do not get me wrong. 3rd party apps and software are ok. One problem is when they install packages that have version numbers higher than the ones from the standard distribution. Then uninstalling has to be done 1- from the package manager itself AND 2- with the third party repo still active in the sources.list. If the 3rd party devs do their jobs correctly, uninstalling should be transparent and then you can remove the repo from the sources.list.

Any other combination of circumstances, including unfortunate internet problem to anything else, can result in a dependency nightmare : some packages are installed, others depend on them, but the version numbers do not match for your release. Clearing out the situation is always a one on one solution. Some general rules can apply, dpkg is a very powerful tool in that situation, but misused it can lead to a completely unusable system. This is why we did go very slowly, small step by small step, trying to identify where the problems were and clearing them out one by one from soft to harsher commands.
apt-get dist-upgrade is also very handy. It checks the dependencies within the distribution and can handle a certain level of conflict.

Thanks everyone, and candra2, thanks for your patience