Unable to locate package libssl-dev and I cant find a solution

Question

I am trying to install libssl-dev but I keep getting error "Unable to locate package libssl-dev"

Solution

Use

apt-cache search libssl

to find out if it is available for you.

Also, make sure, your repositories are correctly configured:

19.10 sources.list
18.04 sources.list
16.04 sources.list

Kali is not supported here, but the same is applied to it also: make sure your repositories are configured correctly

After repositories correction, use sudo apt update and then recheck.

On 19.10 with correctly configured repositories apt-cache search returns:

$ apt-cache search libssl-dev
libssl-dev - Secure Sockets Layer toolkit - development files
perl-openssl-defaults - version compatibility baseline for Perl OpenSSL packages

20.04 sources.list:

$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list | grep -v "#"

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal main restricted

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-updates main restricted

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

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-updates multiverse

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security main restricted
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security universe
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security multiverse                                                                                              

deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse                                                                    

deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu focal partner

Comments

[Kulfy]

Are you using Kali?

[Knud Larsen]

Kali Linux is a Debian-based distribution with a collection of security and forensics tools. .... Has nothing to do with Ubuntu !

[Akshat Zala]

Add following repositories: [packages.debian.org/sid/libssl-dev](libssl-dev)

[Zoltán]

Indeed it turned out that my sources.list was totally broken! Thanks!