Cannot install a package on Ubuntu 17.04

Question

I would like to install dconf-editor on Ubuntu 17.04 64-bit. This tutorial suggests it should be pretty easy - running apt install dconf-editor should be sufficient. It does not work however and prints this message instead:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package dconf-editor

What happened to the dconf-editor package?

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Additional details

• apt-cache policy dconf-editor returns:

  N: Unable to locate package dconf-editor

• apt update does not help.

Solution

If you have rmadison installed you can simply run:

rmadison dconf-editor | grep zesty

to find out if this package is available for zesty. here is my output:

 dconf-editor | 3.23.4-0ubuntu1 | zesty/universe   | source, amd64, arm64, ...

So it's there and it's in universe component; to find out if you have access to install it run:

apt-cache policy dconf-editor

If you get nothing, I guess something is wrong with your sources.list, run:

grep "^deb " /etc/apt/sources.list

to check your sources.list file; you should have some lines look like this:

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ zesty universe
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ zesty-updates universe

If you dont, add them, update your sources; then install the program.

Comments

[Ravexina]

Is your source updated (apt update)? what is the output of apt-cache policy dconf-editor?

[Ravexina]

what is the output of : grep "^deb " /etc/apt/sources.list

[M. Becerra]

Make sure the repository Universe is enabled at System settings > Software and updates

[Mateusz Piotrowski]

@Ravexina I guess you nailed it. I accidentally overwritten /etc/apt/sources.list and its missing the default repositories