Can't upgrade libc*

[Delan Azabani]

I would normally pass this off as a dependency problem (repositories still waiting a little for some other packages to bump up) but it's been almost a week(?) so I think this may be a bug.

On maverick amd64, the libc packages can't upgrade from 2.12.1-0ubuntu4 to 2.12.1-0ubuntu6 because they break a whole ton of packages. I've tried using the main server too and the problem still exists.

The following packages can't be upgraded:
libc-bin
libc-dev-bin
libc6
libc6-dbg
libc6-dev
libc6-i386

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

What exact commands are you running, and can you please provide the full output?

[Delan Azabani (azabani)]

I've tried apt-get's upgrade and dist-upgrade, both of them keep those packages back. I've also tried Update Manager.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Can you please provide the full output of the following command:

  sudo apt-get -o Debug::pkgProblemResolver=true dist-upgrade

[Delan Azabani (azabani)]

root@delan:~# sudo apt-get -o Debug::pkgProblemResolver=true dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Starting
Starting 2
Investigating (0) libc6-dev [ amd64 ] < 2.12.1-0ubuntu4 -> 2.12.1-0ubuntu6 > ( libdevel )
Broken libc6-dev:amd64 Depends on libc6 [ amd64 ] < 2.12.1-0ubuntu4 -> 2.12.1-0ubuntu6 > ( libs ) (= 2.12.1-0ubuntu4)
  Considering libc6:amd64 11035 as a solution to libc6-dev:amd64 10025
  Re-Instated libc6:amd64
Broken libc6-dev:amd64 Depends on libc-dev-bin [ amd64 ] < 2.12.1-0ubuntu4 -> 2.12.1-0ubuntu6 > ( libdevel ) (= 2.12.1-0ubuntu4)
  Considering libc-dev-bin:amd64 11 as a solution to libc6-dev:amd64 10025
  Added libc-dev-bin:amd64 to the remove list
  Fixing libc6-dev:amd64 via keep of libc-dev-bin:amd64
 Try to Re-Instate (0) libc-dev-bin:amd64
Re-Instated libc-dev-bin:amd64 (1 vs 1)
Investigating (1) libc6-dev [ amd64 ] < 2.12.1-0ubuntu4 -> 2.12.1-0ubuntu6 > ( libdevel )
Broken libc6-dev:amd64 Depends on libc6 [ amd64 ] < 2.12.1-0ubuntu4 -> 2.12.1-0ubuntu6 > ( libs ) (= 2.12.1-0ubuntu4)
  Considering libc6:amd64 10025 as a solution to libc6-dev:amd64 10025
Broken libc6-dev:amd64 Depends on libc-dev-bin [ amd64 ] < 2.12.1-0ubuntu4 -> 2.12.1-0ubuntu6 > ( libdevel ) (= 2.12.1-0ubuntu4)
  Considering libc-dev-bin:amd64 11 as a solution to libc6-dev:amd64 10025
  Added libc-dev-bin:amd64 to the remove list
  Fixing libc6-dev:amd64 via keep of libc-dev-bin:amd64
Investigating (2) libc6-dev [ amd64 ] < 2.12.1-0ubuntu4 -> 2.12.1-0ubuntu6 > ( libdevel )
Broken libc6-dev:amd64 Depends on libc6 [ amd64 ] < 2.12.1-0ubuntu4 -> 2.12.1-0ubuntu6 > ( libs ) (= 2.12.1-0ubuntu4)
  Considering libc6:amd64 10025 as a solution to libc6-dev:amd64 10025
Done
Failed
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libc6-dev : Depends: libc6 (= 2.12.1-0ubuntu4) but 2.12.1-0ubuntu6 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Could you also post the output of:

  dpkg -l libc6\* libc-dev\*

Thanks.

[Delan Azabani (azabani)]

delan@delan:~$ dpkg -l libc6\* libc-dev\*
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-=====================================================-=====================================================-==========================================================================================================================
un libc-dev <none> (no description available)
ii libc-dev-bin 2.12.1-0ubuntu4 Embedded GNU C Library: Development binaries
ii libc6 2.12.1-0ubuntu4 Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii libc6-dbg 2.12.1-0ubuntu4 Embedded GNU C Library: detached debugging symbols
hi libc6-dev 2.12.1-0ubuntu4 Embedded GNU C Library: Development Libraries and Header Files
un libc6-dev-i386 <none> (no description available)
ii libc6-i386 2.12.1-0ubuntu4 GNU C Library: 32-bit shared libraries for AMD64
un libc6.1 <none> (no description available)
un libc6.1-dev <none> (no description available)

[Adam Conrad (adconrad)]

Well I suppose the obvious question is "why do you have libc6-dev on hold?", and if you change that via some packaging frontend, or just at the command line with:

echo "libc6-dev install" | dpkg --set-selections

Does that fix your upgrade issue?

[Delan Azabani (azabani)]

That fixes the problem, thanks. I don't know why it is on hold, I certainly never have held it manually.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

It's hard to answer that retrospectively. I agree with Adam, though - this problem was a direct response to having libc6-dev on hold, and nothing I know of will do that other than in response to an explicit user action. Perhaps it was a misclick in Synaptic or something ...