Package manager broken

[joshli]

Hello.

When I try to use apt-get, Ubuntu Software Center, or Synaptics manager, it will have an error and says that the installer is broken.

So, I run the command
sudo apt-get install -f
It installs everything except for this one package called splashy. I keep trying to use this command and it still doesn't work. I can not install anything else because of this.



root@www:~# apt-get install -f
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
splashy
Suggested packages:
console-common
The following NEW packages will be installed:
splashy
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 43 not upgraded.
6 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/1,181kB of archives.
After this operation, 1,839kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
(Reading database ... 177641 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking splashy (from .../splashy_0.3.13-5ubuntu1_i386.deb) ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/splashy_0.3.13-5ubuntu1_i386.deb (--unpack):
trying to overwrite '/etc/lsb-base-logging.sh', which is also in package lsb-base 0:4.0-0ubuntu5
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/splashy_0.3.13-5ubuntu1_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)


If I use Synaptic Package Manager and I press fix broken packages, this is what comes up:


E: /var/cache/apt/archives/splashy_0.3.13-5ubuntu1_i386.deb: trying
to overwrite '/etc/lsb-base-logging.sh', which is also in package lsb-base 0

Thanks for your help.

[phillw]

Hi,

have you tried
sudo dpkg --configure -a

That usually gets it back happy.

Regards,

Phill.

[joshli]

Nope. It still does not work ):


joshli@www:~$ sudo dpkg --configure -a
[sudo] password for joshli:
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of splashy-themes:
splashy-themes depends on splashy (>= 0.3.12-1); however:
Package splashy is not installed.
dpkg: error processing splashy-themes (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
splashy-themes

Is there a way to force remove splashy-themes? Or manually install the dependency for splashy?

[lykwydchykyn]

I don't think it will. dpkg -configure -a simply re-runs the configuration portion of the apt install, which is where things are breaking down for you.

What's happening is that the "splashy" package contains a file which is also in another package lsb-base. Package managers don't allow packages to overwrite files in other packages as a safeguard. You have basically three options to fix this:

- Remove splashy; it's a legacy bootsplash system which you can safely remove, but you may end up with no bootsplash (only a cosmetic issue). If you want the original Ubuntu bootsplash back, install usplash.

- Remove lsb-base: I wouldn't recommend this, as it was likely installed as a dependency for something.

- Force overwrite: You can just force the package manager to overwrite the file even though it's in another package. Just enter this:



sudo dpkg -i --force-all /var/cache/apt/archives/splashy_0.3.13-5ubuntu1_i386.deb

Of course, you run the risk of breaking the other package if the contents of that file are different.

[joshli]

- Force overwrite: You can just force the package manager to overwrite the file even though it's in another package. Just enter this:



sudo dpkg -i --force-all /var/cache/apt/archives/splashy_0.3.13-5ubuntu1_i386.deb



Thank you very much. This fix worked.