How can I solve VLC's dependency "vlc-nox"?

Question

I have installed Ubuntu (Ubuntu 2.6.38-11-generic-pae #50-Ubuntu SMP, i686 Athlon i386 GNU/Linux). I am newcomer in Linux.

I am trying to install VLC media player using command line:

% sudo apt-get update
% sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-pulse mozilla-plugin-vlc

The first command is executed without problems. Then I tried to run the second line, which gives me following output:

Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree        Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:  mozilla-plugin-vlc : Depends: vlc-nox (= 1.1.9-1ubuntu1.3) but it is not going to be installed  vlc : Depends: vlc-nox (= 1.1.9-1ubuntu1.3) but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: libavcodec52 (>= 4:0.6-1~) but it is not going to be installed or
                libavcodec-extra-52 (>= 4:0.6-1~) but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: libqtgui4 (>= 4:4.5.3) but it is not going to be installed
       Depends: libva-x11-1 but it is not installable
       Depends: libva1 but it is not installable
       Depends: libxcb-keysyms1 (>= 0.3.6) but it is not installable
       Depends: libxcb-randr0 (>= 1.1) but it is not installable
       Depends: libxcb-xv0 (>= 1.2) but it is not installable
       Recommends: vlc-plugin-notify (= 1.1.9-1ubuntu1.3) but it is not going to be installed  vlc-plugin-pulse : Depends: vlc-nox (=
1.1.9-1ubuntu1.3) but it is not going to be installed E: Broken packages

How can I resolve this issue?

After that I also tried to install GNOME Media Player from Ubuntu software center. It returned following error message:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:

gnome-media-player: Depends: libatkmm-1.6-1 (>= 2.22.0) but 2.22.5-0ubuntu1 is to be installed
                    Depends: libc6 (>= 2.4) but 2.13-0ubuntu13 is to be installed
                    Depends: libdbus-1-3 (>= 1.0.2) but 1.4.6-1ubuntu6.1 is to be installed
                    Depends: libdbus-glib-1-2 (>= 0.78) but 0.92-0ubuntu1 is to be installed
                    Depends: libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1) but 1:4.5.2-8ubuntu4 is to be installed
                    Depends: libgconf2-4 (>= 2.31.1) but 2.32.2-0ubuntu2 is to be installed
                    Depends: libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.12.0) but 2.28.6-0ubuntu1 is to be installed
                    Depends: libglibmm-2.4-1c2a (>= 2.27.3) but 2.28.0-1 is to be installed
                    Depends: libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0 (>= 0.10.0) but 0.10.32-1ubuntu5 is to be installed
                    Depends: libgstreamer0.10-0 (>= 0.10.7) but 0.10.32-3ubuntu3.1 is to be installed
                    Depends: libgtk2.0-0 (>= 2.12.0) but 2.24.4-0ubuntu2 is to be installed
                    Depends: libgtkmm-2.4-1c2a (>= 1:2.22.0) but 1:2.24.0-0ubuntu1 is to be installed
                    Depends: libsigc++-2.0-0c2a (>= 2.0.2) but 2.2.4.2-1ubuntu1 is to be installed
                    Depends: libstdc++6 (>= 4.5) but 4.5.2-8ubuntu4 is to be installed
                    Depends: libunique-1.0-0 (>= 1.0.0) but 1.1.6-1.1ubuntu2 is to be installed
                    Depends: libvlc5 (>= 1.1.0) but 1.1.9-1ubuntu1.3 is to be installed
                    Depends: libxine1 (>= 1.1.8-1) but it is not going to be installed

Solution 1

The logs there are telling you that you're missing a bunch of dependencies. You can go the slow route of installing each one individually or separated by a space. However, I'm running ubuntu 11.04 (latest stable version) and have not experienced the same issues. Only difference could be that I did (below) after a new install.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get install build-essential

When I go to install vlc

sudo apt-get install vlc

It tells me that I need to install dependencies. I type Y to install them. The process goes through normally and installs.

Solution 2

Some of the packages, like gstreamer, are not in the standard repository. You need to enable download from multiverse and universe repos.

More info on: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/Ubuntu

Solution 3

I don't feel good about the apt-get upgrade which most of the answers are suggesting.

This is mainly because of two reasons.

A. When it is not needed to upgrade all the packages, why would you do it.

B. Not all upgraded packages work as efficiently as the one already installed.

I would suggest to use the terminal and use:

sudo apt-get install vlc

Now lets say you get unmet dependencies for vlc-nox like

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 vlc : Depends: vlc-nox (= 2.1.6-0ubuntu14.04.2) but it is not going to be installed
   Depends: libvlccore7 (>= 2.1.0) but it is not going to be installed
   Recommends: vlc-plugin-notify (= 2.1.6-0ubuntu14.04.2) but it is not going to be installed
   Recommends: vlc-plugin-pulse (= 2.1.6-0ubuntu14.04.2) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Now just add name of the dependencies to the command.

sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-nox

Keep on adding dependencies until you get a clear install start.

One thing to note: I faced version problem with one of the dependencies. Dependencies was installed but of older version.

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libvlccore7 : Depends: vlc-data (= 2.1.6-0ubuntu14.04.2) but 3.0.0~~git20150319+r59816+33~ubuntu14.04.1 is to be installed

Use purge to solve this type of problem.

apt-get purge vlc-data

and then run the install command. In my case it ended up being.

sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-data vlc-nox libvlccore7 vlc-plugin-notify vlc-plugin-pulse 

and Voila! Hope that helps.

Solution 4

For me (Ubuntu 11.10) the answer was as simple as running :

 sudo apt-get -f install

View more solutions

Comments

[guenter]

looks like a great mess... What Ubuntu version are you running (cat /etc/issue)? You might try 'apt-get check' to chech the consistency of the packaging system.

[Prakash Panjwani]

thanks .... now i can able to install vlc player...I gone for upper answer too.After doing both i am able to install vlc player now.

[micke]

Yeah you know you don't need Ubuntu 11 to install VLC.

[kobaltz]

I know. I was just illustrating and documenting with the version that I had.