Unable to install Google Earth in Ubuntu 12.04 (64 bit)

[Colin Mills]

I have just installed ubuntu 12.04 and when I downloaded 'google-earth-stable_current_amd64.deb' via the Ubuntu Software Centre I got the following error report:-
Cannot install 'ia32-libs'

When I attempted to install ia32-libs via the command line, I got the following error message:-

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.
 ia32-libs : Depends: ia32-libs-multiarch
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

It looks as if there may be a problem with the multiarch software.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/980231/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Colin Mills (cm006a5077)]

Appears to be identical to Bug #970724

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and trying to help make Ubuntu better. However, it seems that you are not using a software package provided by the official Ubuntu repositories. Because of this the Ubuntu project can not support or fix your particular bug. Please report this bug to the provider of the software package. Thanks!

If you are interested in learning more about software repositories and Ubuntu the following pages should be informative:

1. http://www.ubuntu.com/community/ubuntustory/components - information about Ubuntu repositories
2. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories - information regarding managing repositories.

[Colin Mills (cm006a5077)]

Fabio

I accept that Google Earth is not an in the Ubuntu Repositories but I would make two comments

1) Google earth can be instlled in Ubuntu 11.10 as it pulls in the 32 bit dependencies
2) I would draw your attention to my bug report which states that I was unable to install ia32-libs (an Ubuntu package?) from the command line, as I got the error report "The following packages have unmet dependencies. ia32-libs : Depends: ia32-libs-multiarch E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages."

[Gerhard Maag (gp-maag)]

Same error here. Until moments ago I had 12.04 (64-bit) running acceptably. I installed the .deb package from the Google Earth website, as well as lsb-core. Everything functioned normally for about 2 days until Ubuntu updated this afternoon. The update uninstalled Google Earth and now I cannot reinstall because of the unmet dependency with ia32-libs.
It may be that Google Earth is not in the repositories. Nevertheless, if 12.04-64 breaks Google Earth, it will be no small issue for myriads of users.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 08:55:45PM -0000, Colin Mills wrote:
> 2) I would draw your attention to my bug report which states that I was
> unable to install ia32-libs (an Ubuntu package?) from the command line, as
> I got the error report "The following packages have unmet dependencies.
> ia32-libs : Depends: ia32-libs-multiarch E: Unable to correct problems,
> you have held broken packages."

That's true enough, but just like bug #970724 that you referenced, there is
no actual bug in ia32-libs here. There *might* be a bug in a dependency
package, but you'll need to drill down with apt-get to confirm this.

Chances are high that you've seen the archive temporarily out-of-sync across
architectures, or that you have a non-standard version of a library package
installed that's incompatible with multiarch.

[Gerhard Maag (gp-maag)]

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs-multiarch

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 resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 ia32-libs-multiarch:i386 : Depends: gstreamer0.10-plugins-base:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: gstreamer0.10-plugins-good:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3:i386
                            Depends: libqtwebkit4:i386 but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

[Colin Mills (cm006a5077)]

sudo apt-get install ia32-libs-arch

 ia32-libs-multiarch:i386 : Depends: gstreamer0.10-plugins-base:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: gstreamer0.10-plugins-good:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: gtk2-engines:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: gtk2-engines-murrine:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: gtk2-engines-pixbuf:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: ibus-gtk:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: libcanberra-gtk-module:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: libgail-common:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: libgtk2.0-0:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: libqt4-opengl:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: libqt4-qt3support:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: libqt4-scripttools:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: libqt4-svg:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: libqtgui4:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: libqtwebkit4:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                            Depends: librsvg2-common:i386 but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

The problem seems to have occurred after some recent updates see the message from Gerhard Maag (gp-maag) earlier (message #5).

I installed Google Earth plus its dependencies in an earlier install of Ubntu 12.04, about a week ago.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 09:47:28PM -0000, Gerhard Maag wrote:
> 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 resolve the situation:

> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
> ia32-libs-multiarch:i386 : Depends: gstreamer0.10-plugins-base:i386 but it is not going to be installed
> Depends: gstreamer0.10-plugins-good:i386 but it is not going to be installed
> Depends: gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3:i386
> Depends: libqtwebkit4:i386 but it is not going to be installed

This is an out-of-sync libgstreamer0.10-0; will be fixed with the next
publisher run.

[Gerhard Maag (gp-maag)]

Thanks for the info! Just have to be patient.

[Gerhard Maag (gp-maag)]

Changed sources to main and ran apt-get update, then Update Manager. I was able to reinstall Google Earth from the .deb and it runs as it did before. Synaptic now shows ia32-libs and ia32-libs-multiarch installed. Fixed.