Comment 2 for bug 386539

It seems that it is a problem with a package version. You can override this by rebuilding libmesh in an updated ubuntu 9.04

just:

$ apt-get source libmesh-dev
$ cd libmesh-0.6.3.dfsg~rc1/
$ dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -uc -b
$ cd ..
$ sudo dpkg -i libmesh0.6.3_0.6.3.dfsg~rc1-1_i386.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i libmesh-dev_0.6.3.dfsg~rc1-1_all.deb
$ rm -r libmesh-0.6.3.dfsg~rc1 libmesh0.6.3_0.6.3.dfsg~rc1-1_i386.deb libmesh_0.6.3.dfsg~rc1-1.diff.gz \
> libmesh_0.6.3.dfsg~rc1-1.dsc libmesh_0.6.3.dfsg~rc1-1_i386.changes libmesh_0.6.3.dfsg~rc1.orig.tar.gz \
> libmesh-dev_0.6.3.dfsg~rc1-1_all.deb

And now you can compile without any error:

$ cp -r /usr/share/doc/libmesh-dev/examples/ex1 .
$ cd ex1
$ make
g++ ex1.C -I/usr/include/mpi -I/usr/include/petsc -I/usr/include/libmesh -c -o ex1.o
g++ ex1.o -lmesh -o ex1

I think this error will be automatically resolved in karmic, but (at least in a debootstrap now) it cannot be installed. I'll wait to karmic to close this bug:

(karmic)root@mycomputer:/# apt-get install libmesh-dev
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:
  libmesh-dev: Depends: libmesh0.6.3 (>= 0.6.3.dfsg~rc1-1) but it is not going to be installed
               Depends: libpetsc2.3.3-dev (>= 2.3.3-3) but it is not installable
E: Broken packages