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unmet dependencies

         

puremetal

6:59 pm on Mar 24, 2009 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



Hi all, its been a while since I've posted on this site, largely because I took the plunge and moved from shared hosting to a dedicated server. I feel like I've been tossed in at the deep end, not knowing how to swim, but there's a lot of help and tutorials out there, so I'm doing OK.

However, some things I just can't figure out. One of the most irritating things is how often I find there are unmet dependencies when I try to install new things. For example, I
tried installing, using apt-get, a number of packages, such as rkhunter, chkrootkit, mod-security. however, i continually get the same kind of errors.

# sudo apt-get install rkhunter chkrootkit
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
You might want to run âapt-get -f installâ to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies.
libcurl4-gnutls-dev: Depends: libcurl3-gnutls (= 7.18.2-8) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libgnutls-dev
Depends: zlib1g-dev but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libidn11-dev but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libkrb5-dev but it is not going to be installed or hurd but it is not installable
Depends: libldap2-dev but it is not going to be installed
rkhunter: Depends: mailx
E: Unmet dependencies. Try âapt-get -f installâ with no packages (or specify a solution).

Can anyone clarify this at all? Using -f doesn't help, and it seems that each time I try to install any of those dependencies, yet more unmet dependencies are thrown up. Thanks

graeme_p

4:25 pm on Mar 25, 2009 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



This should not be happening, I would guess something is wrong with an installed package, the package database or similar.

Have you edited sources.list? Check its OK. There should be ways to clean up everything: I think apt-get clean removes downloaded packages (they might be corrupt).

It should be possible to rebuild the package database: I do not know how.

If you do not get an answer here try your distro's (which one is it?) forums.

puremetal

5:16 pm on Mar 25, 2009 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



thanks graeme_p.... would apt-get clean remove any things like Apache/PHP/MySQL, etc? cos reinstalling and reconfiguring those would make my head explode, i think.

its Ubuntu Server 6.06.2 LTS btw... i'll take a look round their forums, too, thanks

encyclo

5:48 pm on Mar 25, 2009 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



It's not clear if you have tried the solution suggested by apt (it's not well-explained), which is to use -f but not specify any package to install: 

sudo apt-get -f install

graeme_p

10:17 pm on Mar 25, 2009 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member Top Contributors Of The Month



No, it does not remove what is installed. It removes locally stored copies of the downloaded file (i.e. the .deb file), not the installed files.

Incidentally I assumed that you had tried sudo apt-get -f install, but, as encylo says, it is badly explained and it is the first thing to try.

puremetal

3:12 pm on Mar 26, 2009 (gmt 0)

10+ Year Member



encyclo, thank you! i used autoclean, followed by -f install and things seem to be fine now (so far) :D
i would say that it isn't clear about the -f install suggestion. i figured it meant to try apt-get -f install *packagename* for the specific package. it looks like a number of packages hadn't installed properly.

you two just made my day :P

 

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