Broken dependency in libdbi-perl for 13.10...

[Frank Earl]

fearl@fearl-Precision-M6600:/etc/apt# sudo apt-get install libdbi-perl
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:
 libdbi-perl : Depends: perlapi-5.14.2
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
fearl@fearl-Precision-M6600:/etc/apt#

Reason for issue: Package appears to be expecting the 5.14.2 Perl API- 13.10 appears to be shipping with version 5.18.1 of Perl.

This breaks ANYTHING using Perl with a DB access component to the scripting. Includes many things including X2Go server, squishdot, etc.

[Frank Earl (linusti)]

By the way, this screws up things like MySQL's install as well... From the Ubuntuforums thread:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 mysql-client-5.5 : Depends: libdbi-perl but it is not installable
                    Depends: libdbd-mysql-perl (>= 1.2202) but it is not installable
                    Depends: libterm-readkey-perl but it is not installable
 mysql-server-5.5 : Depends: libdbi-perl but it is not installable
                    Depends: mysql-server-core-5.5 (= 5.5.34-0ubuntu0.13.04.1) but it is not going to be installed
                    Recommends: libhtml-template-perl but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

This needs to be fixed ASAP.

[Frank Earl (linusti)]

Looking at the repo mirrors, someone pushed what appears to be a partial update of things to 5.18.1 on Nov 2. You can't even downgrade this 'oops' without a LOT of skill and expertise:

fearl@fearl-Precision-M6600:~$ sudo apt-get install perl-base=5.14.2-21build1
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:
 cli-common : Depends: perl-modules but it is not going to be installed
 libwebkitgtk-1.0-0 : Depends: libenchant1c2a (>= 1.6.0) but it is not going to be installed
 update-notifier : Depends: update-manager-gnome but it is not installable or
                            update-manager (>= 1:0.165) but it is not going to be installed
                   Depends: ubuntu-release-upgrader-gtk but it is not going to be installed
 xemacs21 : Depends: xemacs21-mule (>= 21.4.22-4ubuntu1) but it is not going to be installed or
                     xemacs21-mule-canna-wnn (>= 21.4.22-4ubuntu1) but it is not going to be installed or
                     xemacs21-nomule (>= 21.4.22-4ubuntu1) but it is not going to be installed
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.
fearl@fearl-Precision-M6600:~$

This breaks a HECK of a lot things, guys.

[Frank Earl (linusti)]

And now I try to actually do my day-job work...finally...and I find that a crucial piece for me to be building embedded hardware is effectively broken by this. texinfo uses a something that's broken by this screwed up dependency chain.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Larry Wilson (larry2311)]

Wasted too much time on this same situation with held broken packages.

Re-installing, hopefully it gets fixed upstream and doesn't recur.