Error message on unmet dependencies during update should be improved

Bug #192204 reported by Steve Langasek
18
This bug affects 3 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
update-manager (Ubuntu)
Triaged
Wishlist
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: update-manager

update-manager reports today:

 A unresolvable problem occurred while calculating the upgrade.

 Please report this bug against the 'update-manager' package and include the following error message:
 'E:Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.'

Please let me know what other information you need in order to track this down.

BTW, "A unresolvable" should be "An unresolvable" in this error message.

Revision history for this message
Andrea Corbellini (andrea.corbellini) wrote :

Thank you for your bug report.
Please, can you tell me if you have an /etc/apt/preferences file and, if yes, can you attach its content?
And can you tell me also what does `sudo apt-get upgrade` tell you (without doing the upgrade possibly)?

Changed in update-manager:
assignee: nobody → andrea-bs
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Steve Langasek (vorlon) wrote :

No /etc/apt/preferences.

no errors from apt-get upgrade, but apt-get dist-upgrade shows:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Failed
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  xulrunner-1.9: Breaks: firefox-3.0 (< 3.0~b3) but 3.0~b3~cvs20080101t1000+nobinonly-0ubuntu1 is to be installed
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.

That seems a reasonable cause for update-manager to fail to calculate an upgrade, but the error message returned by update-manager doesn't seem very useful.

Revision history for this message
Hanno Stock (hefe_bia) (hanno-stock) wrote :

Hi Steve,

it seems that at the time of your upgrade the version of Firefox in the repositories was incompatible with the version of xulrunner. (This can happen while the release is still in development.)
Please check whether the problem still occurs and if yes please attach the files from your /var/log/dist-upgrade directory.

Thanks.

Revision history for this message
Steve Langasek (vorlon) wrote :

Hanno,

Yes, I'm well aware that these kinds of upgrade problems may happen during an upgrade. I filed this bug because a) there was an error message *saying* to file this bug, b) the error message itself lacked the information necessary to identify the problem and direct the bug report at somewhere more useful (i.e., the package responsible).

This particular upgrade failure is certainly long gone, but I think the error message still needs to be improved.

Revision history for this message
Hanno Stock (hefe_bia) (hanno-stock) wrote :

I agree, the error message should be improved.
I have therefore changed the description of this bug and marked as confirmed.

Changed in update-manager:
assignee: andrea-bs → nobody
status: Incomplete → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Andrea Corbellini (andrea.corbellini) wrote :

Could you please tell which information should be included?

The package affected was mentioned by apt-get:
xulrunner-1.9: Breaks: firefox-3.0

Changed in update-manager:
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
status: Confirmed → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Steve Langasek (vorlon) wrote :

Yes, the package affected was mentioned by *apt-get*. If we're going to have an error message in update-manager telling people to file bugs, then the package affected should also be mentioned by *update-manager*; no one should have to go to a terminal to get this information.

Changed in update-manager:
assignee: nobody → ubuntu-desktop
status: Incomplete → Triaged
assignee: ubuntu-desktop → nobody
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