apr 05/11 update renders updates inoperable

[marcus aurelius]

interesting problem today. i think i saw a posting of this before but can't find it.

i did an update about an hour ago via the update manager. there was a message that said all packages cannot be installed and that a partial update should be attempted to install as many packages as possible. after doing that, i did another update. there are other packages shown, but they are greyed out, so is the install updates button.

issuing sudo apt-get install update resulted in

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package update

using 10.04.2 LTS

[marcus aurelius (adbiz)]

other users experiencing same problem

https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/151767

[David Kalnischkies (donkult)]

It is 'sudo apt-get update' to update APTs knowledge about packages and 'sudo apt-get install whatever' there 'whatever' is the name of a package. You can't execute both commands at the same time and a package with the name 'update' doesn't exist as the error message tells you.

You should report that bug against your 'update manager' as i don't know what you are talking about then you say something about GUI (i would reassign it, but i don't know what you mean…)

[marcus aurelius (adbiz)]

I think it's quite clear.

First, I used update manager when the problem occurred. Thinking that there might be something wrong with the update manager package (GUI), I tried the CLI sudo apt-get install update. That failed as well and gave the message that "update" did not exist. After issuing the commands suggest by arochester, the problem of "update" not existing disappeared. However, there was an error message saying that packages were being withheld. I tried the update manager again to see if the command given by arochester fixed update manager. it did not.

It seems that someone may have repackaged the udpates, or did something to that effect. The updates installed on April 6.

What I'm concerned about is that the udpates disabled the update manager and erased the sudo apt-get install "update" and "upgrade" and probably all other commands associated with sudo apt-get install.

[David Kalnischkies (donkult)]

As said, there is not a single command associated with 'sudo apt-get install'. This is already a command!
A command to install one or more packages.

If you want to run the commands 'update', 'upgrade', 'dist-upgrade' and/or all the others it's as simple as 'sudo apt-get update', 'sudo apt-get upgrade', 'sudo apt-get dist-upgrade' or alike (note: no 'install' in between).

'sudo apt-get install update' never worked and will never work. The commands you are looking for are most properly 'sudo apt-get update' to update the knowledge of APT about which packages are available and 'sudo apt-get upgrade' to let APT install all updates for your installed packages (which can be installed, but as you say something about held back packages, it seems its not possible for all at the moment).

[marcus aurelius (adbiz)]

the problem has been rectified, so this can be closed.
btw, other people had similar problem, according to the launchpad link.
i'm not familiar with how updates are packaged and/or if there are different packages for each version of ubuntu, but another person indicated he had the same problem with 10.04 but not with 10.10, so i'm guessing that it was a packaging problem.
thanks for looking into this though.

> Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2011 07:20:04 +0000
> From: <email address hidden>
> To: <email address hidden>
> Subject: [Bug 752201] Re: apr 05/11 update renders updates inoperable
>
> As said, there is not a single command associated with 'sudo apt-get install'. This is already a command!
> A command to install one or more packages.
>
> If you want to run the commands 'update', 'upgrade', 'dist-upgrade'
> and/or all the others it's as simple as 'sudo apt-get update', 'sudo
> apt-get upgrade', 'sudo apt-get dist-upgrade' or alike (note: no
> 'install' in between).
>
> 'sudo apt-get install update' never worked and will never work. The
> commands you are looking for are most properly 'sudo apt-get update' to
> update the knowledge of APT about which packages are available and 'sudo
> apt-get upgrade' to let APT install all updates for your installed
> packages (which can be installed, but as you say something about held
> back packages, it seems its not possible for all at the moment).
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/752201
>
> Title:
> apr 05/11 update renders updates inoperable
>
> Status in “apt” package in Ubuntu:
> New
>
> Bug description:
> interesting problem today. i think i saw a posting of this before but
> can't find it.
>
> i did an update about an hour ago via the update manager. there was a
> message that said all packages cannot be installed and that a partial
> update should be attempted to install as many packages as possible.
> after doing that, i did another update. there are other packages
> shown, but they are greyed out, so is the install updates button.
>
> issuing sudo apt-get install update resulted in
>
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree
> Reading state information... Done
> E: Couldn't find package update
>
> using 10.04.2 LTS
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/752201/+subscribe

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

Reporter asked for closing.