Kubuntu - GDebi fails to install .deb package

[Tony White]

Binary package hint: gdebi-kde

Kubuntu 7.10 final release.

After downloading a .deb package, failed to install with gdebi from konqueror (right-click => open with => GDebi Package installer - and click 'install package') although no message of any kind was displayed to indicate failure.

Subsequent Konsole => dpkg -i <packagename>.deb worked fine, and installed the package.

In the event package contents may be the cause of this, the actual package in question is: tuxcards_1.2-1_i386.deb

[Mike Vaughn (mikevaughn)]

I'm now having this same problem with GDebi. It doesn't appear to be related to the packages themselves, as it is occurring with every package I've tried it with, some of which GDebi previously worked for without issue. I tried running gdebi-kde from the terminal and got this output:

mike@mikes-laptop:~$ gdebi-kde
/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/apt/__init__.py:18: FutureWarning: apt API not stable yet
  warnings.warn("apt API not stable yet", FutureWarning)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/gdebi-kde", line 54, in <module>
    from GDebi.GDebiKDE import GDebiKDE
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/GDebi/GDebiKDE.py", line 34, in <module>
    from kparts import konsolePart,TerminalInterface
ImportError: /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/kparts.so: undefined symbol: _ZN11konsolePart8setPtyFdEi

I reinstalled the packages for gdebi-kde and python-kde3 (the package containing the kparts.so file in question), and am still having the same problem. This isn't really a huge deal for me personally, as I usually just install foreign packages with "sudo dpkg -i packagename && sudo apt-get install -f," but most people, especially Linux newcomers, don't want to have to do this.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

I'm unable to replicate this on Gutsy. How much memory and how big is the swap file on this machine?

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Reporter indicates via IRC that gdebi-kde now works for him. The system in question is a low memory (512mb RAM/1gb swap) and so was likely affected by the kparts memory usage bug that was fixed shortly after Gutsy release.