Dependency problems while installing Webmin

Question

I'm having problems when installing Webmin for Debian Wheezy.

It turns out that, while installing the dependencies which are mentioned on these instructions from Webmin website, I receive the following error when installing apt-show-versions:

$ apt-get install apt-show-versions
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
apt-show-versions is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 15 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Setting up apt-show-versions (0.20) ...
** initializing cache. This may take a while **
Error: No information about packages! (Maybe no deb entries?)
dpkg: error processing apt-show-versions (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 255
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of webmin:
 webmin depends on apt-show-versions; however:
  Package apt-show-versions is not configured yet.

dpkg: error processing webmin (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 apt-show-versions
 webmin
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Seems like that APT is having problems to process the configuration of the package.

Acoording to "man apt":

--configure package...|-a|--pending

Configure a package which has been unpacked but not yet configured. If -a or --pending is given instead of package, all unpacked but unconfigured packages are configured.

To reconfigure a package which has already been configured, try the dpkg-reconfigure(8) command instead.

Configuring consists of the following steps:

1. Unpack the conffiles, and at the same time back up the old conffiles, so that they can be restored if something goes wrong.

2. Run postinst script, if provided by the package.

I tried to...

• uninstall webmin and then installing apt-show-versions
• to clean APT cache

...but none of these options have solved my problem.

What kind of solution/workaround can I apply for this issue?

Solution 1

rm /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/docker-gzip-indexes
apt-get purge apt-show-versions
rm /var/lib/apt/lists/*lz4
apt-get -o Acquire::GzipIndexes=false update
apt-get install apt-show-versions

Solution 2

I found this solution from this guy on the BeagleBoard forum page at Google Groups.

Here is the way that I chose to follow this procedure (here's the Webmin package):

purge apt-show-versions

apt-get purge apt-show-versions

set on the fly option for apt

apt-get -o Acquire::GzipIndexes=false update

apt-show-versions

$ apt-get install apt-show-versions
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
apt-show-versions is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 15 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y
Setting up apt-show-versions (0.20) ...
** initializing cache. This may take a while **

webmin

$ dpkg -i webmin_1.831_all.deb 
Selecting previously unselected package webmin.
(Reading database ... 13818 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking webmin (from webmin_1.831_all.deb) ...
Setting up webmin (1.831) ...
Webmin install complete. 
You can now login to https://e93cd8ed670b:10000/ as root with your root password, 
or as any user who can use sudo to run commands as root.

$ /etc/init.d/webmin start 
$ /etc/init.d/webmin status
Webmin (pid 4713) is running

[explanations]

Acoording with apt.conf man page:

...

THE ACQUIRE GROUP

The Acquire group of options controls the download of packages as well as the various "acquire methods" responsible for the download itself (see also sources.list(5)). ... ...

GzipIndexes

When downloading gzip compressed indexes (Packages, Sources, or Translations), keep them gzip compressed locally instead of unpacking them. This saves quite a lot of disk space at the expense of more CPU requirements when building the local package caches.

False by default (doesn't seem to be the case for this situation).

Probably, this version of apt-show-versions (0.20), has a different behavior when dealing with GZIP compressed indexes and then, it is necessary to configure "Acquire::GzipIndexes=false" on the fly (apt-get update), or via /etc/apt/apt.conf, in order to follow with the installation of apt-show-versions..

Solution 3

Here what worked for me:

dpkg --configure -D 777 apt-show-versions 

result:

root@odroidserver:~# dpkg --configure -D 777 apt-show-versions
D000001: ensure_diversions: new, (re)loading
D000001: process queue pkg apt-show-versions:all queue.len 0 progress 1, try 1
D000040: checking dependencies of apt-show-versions:all (- <none>)
D000400:   checking group ...
D000400:     checking possibility  -> perl
D000400:       checking non-provided pkg perl:armhf
D000400:       is installed, ok and found
D000400:     found 3
D000400:   found 3 matched 0 possfixbytrig -
D000400:   checking group ...
D000400:     checking possibility  -> apt
D000400:       checking non-provided pkg apt:armhf
D000400:       is installed, ok and found
D000400:     found 3
D000400:   found 3 matched 0 possfixbytrig -
D000400:   checking group ...
D000400:     checking possibility  -> libapt-pkg-perl
D000400:       checking non-provided pkg libapt-pkg-perl:armhf
D000400:       is installed, ok and found
D000400:     found 3
D000400:   found 3 matched 0 possfixbytrig -
D000400:   checking group ...
D000400:     checking possibility  -> libstorable-perl
D000400:       not installed
D000400:         returning 0
D000400:      checking provider libperl5.26:armhf
D000400:       checking package libstorable-perl provided by pkg libperl5.26:armhf
D000400:       is installed, ok and found
D000400:     found 3
D000400:   found 3 matched 0 possfixbytrig -
D000040: ok 2 msgs >><<
D000040:     checking Breaks
Setting up apt-show-versions (0.22.7ubuntu1) ...
D000002: fork/exec /var/lib/dpkg/info/apt-show-versions.postinst ( configure  )
** initializing cache. This may take a while **
Error: No information about packages! (Maybe no deb entries?)
dpkg: error processing package apt-show-versions (--configure):
 installed apt-show-versions package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 255
D000001: ensure_diversions: same, skipping
Errors were encountered while processing:
 apt-show-versions

In my case it pointed to an issue with package libstorable-perl. So I did:

apt-get purge apt-show-versions
apt-get update
apt-get install libstorable-perl
apt-get install apt-show-versions

voilá

Comments

[RoyM]

Thank you - this worked for me.. phew