pre-removal script returned error exit status 1

[shaoxuan]

Hello,

I'm using ubuntu 10.10 maverick, a package named lmodern is not required by the system, but it can't be remove or purged as follow:


yurippe@Neptune:~$ sudo apt-get autoremove
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
lmodern
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 46.7MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y

(Reading database ... 264790 files and directories currently installed.)

Removing lmodern ...
W: type1: Category not found.
W: type1: Category not found.
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dpkg: error processing lmodern (--remove):
subprocess installed pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
lmodern
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
yurippe@Neptune:~$

I have tried:


sudo apt-get autoclean
sudo apt-get clean
sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

all without any error, but lmodern can't be removed.

Now how can I do to remove this unneeded package? Thanks.

[tommcd]

The lmodern package is apparently a font package and should do no harm.
http://packages.ubuntu.com/maverick/lmodern
If you want to remove it, try:
sudo apt-get remove lmodern or

sudo apt-get remove --purge lmodern
Be careful before hitting yes. APT may want to remove some dependencies that you need.
You could always just reinstall lmodern if APT removes some dependencies that you need.

[shaoxuan]

The lmodern package is apparently a font package and should do no harm.
http://packages.ubuntu.com/maverick/lmodern
If you want to remove it, try:
sudo apt-get remove lmodern or

sudo apt-get remove --purge lmodern
Be careful before hitting yes. APT may want to remove some dependencies that you need.
You could always just reinstall lmodern if APT removes some dependencies that you need.

Thanks for your reply.:)

yes, lmodern package is no harm for the system, but it's not needed by any packages, so it's better to remove it to regain disk space.

I have tried the commands you suggested, but the output was as the same as before, so any ideas?

Thanks.

[tommcd]

Post the output of:
sudo apt-get remove --purge lmodern
Also install aptitude from the Ubuntu repositories. Aptitude used to be part of a standard Ubuntu install. (It seems that the Ubuntu developers, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that aptitude is no longer needed. This is in spite of the fact that aptitude is the recommended package manger in Debian, which is Ubuntu's parent).
Then post the output of:
aptitude search lmodern
This will show the state of any lmodern* packages that you may have on your system.

[shaoxuan]

Post the output of:
sudo apt-get remove --purge lmodern
Also install aptitude from the Ubuntu repositories. Aptitude used to be part of a standard Ubuntu install. (It seems that the Ubuntu developers, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that aptitude is no longer needed. This is in spite of the fact that aptitude is the recommended package manger in Debian, which is Ubuntu's parent).
Then post the output of:
aptitude search lmodern
This will show the state of any lmodern* packages that you may have on your system.

Thanks for your reply.:D

the remove --purge output:


yurippe@Neptune:~$ sudo apt-get remove --purge lmodern
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
lmodern*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 46.7MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y

(Reading database ... 264977 files and directories currently installed.)

Removing lmodern ...
W: type1: Category not found.
W: type1: Category not found.
W: type1: Category not found.
W: type1: Category not found.
W: type1: Category not found.
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dpkg: error processing lmodern (--purge):
subprocess installed pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
lmodern
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
yurippe@Neptune:~$

The output of aptitude search:


yurippe@Neptune:~$ aptitude search lmodern
idA lmodern - scalable PostScript and OpenType fonts bas
yurippe@Neptune:~$

It seems that there is only one package correlates with lmodern.

Any ideas? Thanks.

[tommcd]

I have just booted my Xubuntu 10.10 install to check out this lmodern package. I do not have the lmodern package installed. Therefore, it must have been installed as a dependency for something else on your system.

Do you have any third party repositories installed on your system? This includes those all too problematic PPA repos that seem to cause so many problems around here.

[shaoxuan]

I have just booted my Xubuntu 10.10 install to check out this lmodern package. I do not have the lmodern package installed. Therefore, it must have been installed as a dependency for something else on your system.

Do you have any third party repositories installed on your system? This includes those all too problematic PPA repos that seem to cause so many problems around here.

Thanks for the reply.

I have installed the texlive-full Bundle before:

(without using third party PPA repository to install this bundle)


yurippe@Neptune:~$sudo apt-get install texlive-full

But the installation process is not successful, due to error with cm-super and cm-super-minimal packages, the texlive-full bundle (95 packages or so) failed to install. So I have to remove them all. The lmodern package is installed along with texlive-full bundle, but it can't be removed. All other packages correlate with texlive-full are removed successfully.

[tommcd]

I have installed the texlive-full Bundle before:
(without using third party PPA repository to install this bundle)
What version of Ubuntu are you using? The lmodern package is not listed as a dependency of texlive-full on Ubuntu 10.10 or 10.04:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/maverick/texlive-full
http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/texlive-full
This is likely why you are having problems. You must have gotten that lmodern package from somewhere. Do you know if you installed it from anywhere else than the standard Ubuntu repos?


But the installation process is not successful, due to error with cm-super and cm-super-minimal packages, the texlive-full bundle (95 packages or so) failed to install. So I have to remove them all. The lmodern package is installed along with texlive-full bundle, but it can't be removed. All other packages correlate with texlive-full are removed successfully.
Post the output of:
aptitude search texlive-full
Per japs you could try switching to another Ubuntu mirror.

[shaoxuan]

What version of Ubuntu are you using? The lmodern package is not listed as a dependency of texlive-full on Ubuntu 10.10 or 10.04:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/maverick/texlive-full
http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/texlive-full
This is likely why you are having problems. You must have gotten that lmodern package from somewhere. Do you know if you installed it from anywhere else than the standard Ubuntu repos?

Post the output of:
aptitude search texlive-full
Per japs you could try switching to another Ubuntu mirror.

Hello, I'm using ubuntu 10.10 maverick.

I think lmodern is a recommanded package by texlive-full, not dependency, but it was installed along with texlive-full:


yurippe@Neptune:~$ LANG=en-US
yurippe@Neptune:~$ sudo apt-get install texlive-full
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
cm-super cm-super-minimal context dvipng feynmf fragmaster lacheck
latex-beamer latex-cjk-all latex-cjk-chinese
latex-cjk-chinese-arphic-bkai00mp latex-cjk-chinese-arphic-bsmi00lp
latex-cjk-chinese-arphic-gbsn00lp latex-cjk-chinese-arphic-gkai00mp
latex-cjk-common latex-cjk-japanese latex-cjk-japanese-wadalab
latex-cjk-korean latex-cjk-thai latex-cjk-xcjk latex-sanskrit latex-xcolor
latexmk luatex musixtex pgf preview-latex-style prosper ps2eps tex4ht
tex4ht-common texlive-base texlive-bibtex-extra texlive-binaries
texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-doc-bg texlive-doc-cs+sk
texlive-doc-de texlive-doc-en texlive-doc-es texlive-doc-fi texlive-doc-fr
texlive-doc-it texlive-doc-ja texlive-doc-ko texlive-doc-mn texlive-doc-nl
texlive-doc-pl texlive-doc-pt texlive-doc-ru texlive-doc-si texlive-doc-th
texlive-doc-tr texlive-doc-uk texlive-doc-vi texlive-doc-zh
texlive-extra-utils texlive-font-utils texlive-fonts-extra
texlive-fonts-extra-doc texlive-fonts-recommended
texlive-fonts-recommended-doc texlive-formats-extra texlive-games
texlive-generic-extra texlive-generic-recommended texlive-humanities
texlive-humanities-doc texlive-lang-african texlive-lang-arabic
texlive-lang-armenian texlive-lang-croatian texlive-lang-cyrillic
texlive-lang-czechslovak texlive-lang-danish texlive-lang-dutch
texlive-lang-finnish texlive-lang-french texlive-lang-german
texlive-lang-greek texlive-lang-hebrew texlive-lang-hungarian
texlive-lang-indic texlive-lang-italian texlive-lang-latin
texlive-lang-latvian texlive-lang-lithuanian texlive-lang-mongolian
texlive-lang-norwegian texlive-lang-other texlive-lang-polish
texlive-lang-portuguese texlive-lang-spanish texlive-lang-swedish
texlive-lang-tibetan texlive-lang-ukenglish texlive-lang-vietnamese
texlive-latex-base texlive-latex-base-doc texlive-latex-extra
texlive-latex-extra-doc texlive-latex-recommended
texlive-latex-recommended-doc texlive-latex3 texlive-luatex
texlive-math-extra texlive-metapost texlive-metapost-doc texlive-music
texlive-omega texlive-pictures texlive-pictures-doc texlive-plain-extra
texlive-pstricks texlive-pstricks-doc texlive-publishers
texlive-publishers-doc texlive-science texlive-science-doc texlive-xetex
thailatex tipa
Suggested packages:
fontforge context-nonfree context-doc-nonfree auctex hbf-cns40-b5 hbf-jfs56
ttf-arphic-bkai00mp ttf-arphic-bsmi00lp ttf-arphic-gbsn00lp
ttf-arphic-gkai00mp hbf-kanji48 ttf-dejima-mincho ttf-kiloji ttf-baekmuk
ttf-sazanami-gothic ttf-sazanami-mincho ttf-unfonts-extra ttf-vlgothic pmx
m-tx dvidvi purifyeps xindy texpower passivetex jadetex xmltex
scalable-cyrfonts-tex
Recommended packages:
lmodern
The following NEW packages will be installed:
cm-super cm-super-minimal context dvipng feynmf fragmaster lacheck
latex-beamer latex-cjk-all latex-cjk-chinese
latex-cjk-chinese-arphic-bkai00mp latex-cjk-chinese-arphic-bsmi00lp
latex-cjk-chinese-arphic-gbsn00lp latex-cjk-chinese-arphic-gkai00mp
latex-cjk-common latex-cjk-japanese latex-cjk-japanese-wadalab
latex-cjk-korean latex-cjk-thai latex-cjk-xcjk latex-sanskrit latex-xcolor
latexmk luatex musixtex pgf preview-latex-style prosper ps2eps tex4ht
tex4ht-common texlive-base texlive-bibtex-extra texlive-binaries
texlive-common texlive-doc-base texlive-doc-bg texlive-doc-cs+sk
texlive-doc-de texlive-doc-en texlive-doc-es texlive-doc-fi texlive-doc-fr
texlive-doc-it texlive-doc-ja texlive-doc-ko texlive-doc-mn texlive-doc-nl
texlive-doc-pl texlive-doc-pt texlive-doc-ru texlive-doc-si texlive-doc-th
texlive-doc-tr texlive-doc-uk texlive-doc-vi texlive-doc-zh
texlive-extra-utils texlive-font-utils texlive-fonts-extra
texlive-fonts-extra-doc texlive-fonts-recommended
texlive-fonts-recommended-doc texlive-formats-extra texlive-full
texlive-games texlive-generic-extra texlive-generic-recommended
texlive-humanities texlive-humanities-doc texlive-lang-african
texlive-lang-arabic texlive-lang-armenian texlive-lang-croatian
texlive-lang-cyrillic texlive-lang-czechslovak texlive-lang-danish
texlive-lang-dutch texlive-lang-finnish texlive-lang-french
texlive-lang-german texlive-lang-greek texlive-lang-hebrew
texlive-lang-hungarian texlive-lang-indic texlive-lang-italian
texlive-lang-latin texlive-lang-latvian texlive-lang-lithuanian
texlive-lang-mongolian texlive-lang-norwegian texlive-lang-other
texlive-lang-polish texlive-lang-portuguese texlive-lang-spanish
texlive-lang-swedish texlive-lang-tibetan texlive-lang-ukenglish
texlive-lang-vietnamese texlive-latex-base texlive-latex-base-doc
texlive-latex-extra texlive-latex-extra-doc texlive-latex-recommended
texlive-latex-recommended-doc texlive-latex3 texlive-luatex
texlive-math-extra texlive-metapost texlive-metapost-doc texlive-music
texlive-omega texlive-pictures texlive-pictures-doc texlive-plain-extra
texlive-pstricks texlive-pstricks-doc texlive-publishers
texlive-publishers-doc texlive-science texlive-science-doc texlive-xetex
thailatex tipa
0 upgraded, 124 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 960MB of archives.
After this operation, 1690MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
Abort.
yurippe@Neptune:~$

The output of aptitude search texlive-full:


yurippe@Neptune:~$ aptitude search texlive-full
p texlive-full - TeX Live: metapackage pulling in all compo
yurippe@Neptune:~$

Thanks.

[shaoxuan]

Is there any way to remove the unneeded lmodern package? Thanks.

[tommcd]

I just installed lmodern on my system. I was able to remove it with.

sudo apt-get remove --purge lmodern
I did not want to try installing texlive-full because according to your post #9 here it installs a total of 124 packages (Yikes!!).
Your output from "aptitude search lmodern" gives this:
idA lmodern
The i means that it is installed.
The d means that the pending action is to delete it. This is due to you running:
sudo apt-get remove --purge lmodern
The A means that it was automatically installed, usually as a dependency for another package.
A p means a package is purged (i.e., not installed).
You could try to remove the stubborn lmodern package with:

sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove lmodern
Some searching around has found a similar problem when installing texlive-pstrick-doc:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1597294
The user "fixed" it by adding the repo for 10.04; but I would not recommend that.