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Kubuntu install stuck with unmet dependencies

📅 2016-Jun-27 ⬩ ✍️ Ashwin Nanjappa ⬩ 🏷️ dpkg, error, kubuntu ⬩ 📚 Archive

Problem

I tried to install Kubuntu on an existing Ubuntu system using this command:

$ sudo apt install kubuntu-desktop

And I got this package dependency error:

You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 kde-telepathy-minimal : Depends: kde-config-telepathy-accounts (>= 15.04.0) but it is not going to be installed
 unity-scope-gdrive : Depends: account-plugin-google but it is not going to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).

However, running sudo apt-get -f install would stop with the same dependency problem.

Solution

The key here is to realize that apt itself cannot resolve this cyclic dependency. So, to fix it we need to use a lower-level tool to explicitly take out the offending package. We can do that by using dpkg:

$ sudo dpkg --purge unity-scope-gdrive
$ sudo dpkg --purge account-plugin-google
$ sudo apt-get -f install

Tried with: Ubuntu 15.10


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