Natty->Oneiric Upgrade failed: An unresolvable problem occurred while calculating the upgrade

[Till Kamppeter]

I got the following error message pop-up:

----------
Could not calculate the upgrade

An unresolvable problem occurred while calculating the upgrade:
E:Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.

 This can be caused by:
 * Upgrading to a pre-release version of Ubuntu
 * Running the current pre-release version of Ubuntu
 * Unofficial software packages not provided by Ubuntu

If none of this applies, then please report this bug using the command 'ubuntu-bug update-manager' in a terminal.
----------

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: update-manager 1:0.150.3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-12.51-generic 2.6.38.8
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-12-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Oct 14 08:45:07 2011
GConfNonDefault:
 /apps/update-manager/check_new_release_ignore=
 /apps/update-manager/first_run=false
 /apps/update-manager/show_details=true
 /apps/update-manager/window_size=(500,600)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: update-manager
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-10-14 (0 days ago)

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Doing the upgrade on the command line (s/natty/oneiric/ in /etc/apt/sources.list, then apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade) gives:

till@till-desktop:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Failed
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 ia32-libs : Recommends: ia32-libs-multiarch but it is not installable
             Breaks: nspluginwrapper (< 1.4.4-0ubuntu2) but 1.2.2-0ubuntu9 is to be installed
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.
till@till-desktop:~$

So the replacement of ia32-libs by individual 32-bit libs seems not to work.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

uninstalling the offending package ia32-libs allows to complete the update.

[[e-mail] (gandalf-lechner-m)]

Thanks Till, that solved it for me, too. Unfortunately some packages like wine flash etc had to be removed as well. I hope that I can reinstall them savely after the update is finished.

[kozimodo (forums-theo)]

Note, wine and flash do not install with ia32-libs missing. Hopefully this gets fixed soon.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

This is not a bug in ia32-libs. update-manager needs to enable multiarch on the natty system before calculating the upgrade; the ia32-libs-multiarch and nspluginwrapper packages are not installable in oneiric without multiarch.

[Thilo-Alexander Ginkel (thilo.ginkel)]

Hm, I manually enabled multiarch using:
  echo foreign-architecture i386 | sudo tee /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/multiarch
as per the instructions in [1], but update-manager is still failing.

s/natty/oneiric/ in /etc/apt/sources.list and running apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade (with multiarch enabled) brings up the same issue:

$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Failed
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 ia32-libs : Recommends: ia32-libs-multiarch
             Breaks: nspluginwrapper (< 1.4.4-0ubuntu2) but 1.2.2-0ubuntu9 is to be installed
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.

[1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2011-August/000886.html

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

It seems something is wrong with the multiarch enabling code, then. Michael, can you please look into this?

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreport.

Could you please attach the logs in /var/log/dist-upgrade/* ?

Update-manager does enable multiarch during the upgrade but a normal "apt-get dist-upgrade" will not, so
the apt-get dist-upgrade output will not reflect what update-manager was doing.

[daamien (damien-taadeem)]

Tahnks for investigating on this issue.

Here's the logs i got in /var/log/dist-upgrade/20111018-1159/ when i performed a an upgrade with update-manager

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Here we go ...

[kozimodo (forums-theo)]

As an FYI, I do not think this is an upgrade issue. I just did a fresh install and it will not install ia32-libs without uninstalling a host of other packages.

$ sudo aptitude install ia32-libs
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  ia32-libs ia32-libs-multiarch{a} lib32asound2{a} lib32bz2-1.0{a}
  lib32ffi6{a} lib32gcc1{a} lib32ncurses5{a} lib32ncursesw5{a}
  lib32stdc++6{a} lib32tinfo5{a} lib32z1{a} libacl1{a} libattr1{a}
  libaudio2{a} libc6-i386{a} libcupsimage2{a} libdrm-intel1{a}
  libdrm-nouveau1a{a} libdrm-radeon1{a} libdrm2{a} libgdbm3{a}
  libgl1-mesa-dri{a} libgl1-mesa-glx{a} libglapi-mesa{a} liblcms1{a}
  libllvm2.9{a} libmng1{a} libmysqlclient16{ab} libpciaccess0{a}
  libqt4-dbus{a} libqt4-declarative{a} libqt4-designer{a} libqt4-network{a}
  libqt4-opengl{a} libqt4-qt3support{a} libqt4-script{a}
  libqt4-scripttools{a} libqt4-sql{a} libqt4-sql-mysql{a} libqt4-svg{a}
  libqt4-test{a} libqt4-xml{a} libqt4-xmlpatterns{a} libqtcore4{a}
  libqtgui4{a} libxss1{a} libxxf86vm1{a}
0 packages upgraded, 47 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 62.5 MB of archives. After unpacking 224 MB will be used.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  libmysqlclient16: Conflicts: libmysqlclient16 but 5.1.58-1ubuntu1 is to be installed.
  libmysqlclient16: Depends: mysql-common (>= 5.1.58-1ubuntu1) which is a virtual package.
                    Conflicts: libmysqlclient16 but 5.1.58-1ubuntu1 is installed.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

       Remove the following packages:
1) flashplugin-downloader
2) flashplugin-installer
3) libasound2
4) libasound2-plugins
5) libasyncns0
6) libatk1.0-0
7) libavahi-client3
8) libavahi-common3
9) libc6
10) libcairo2
11) libcomerr2
12) libcups2
13) libcurl3
14) libdatrie1
15) libdb5.1
16) libdbus-1-3
17) libexpat1
18) libffi6
19) libflac8
20) libfontconfig1 ...

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 01:05:28PM -0000, kozimodo wrote:
> As an FYI, I do not think this is an upgrade issue. I just did a fresh
> install and it will not install ia32-libs without uninstalling a host of
> other packages.

> $ sudo aptitude install ia32-libs
> The following NEW packages will be installed:
> ia32-libs ia32-libs-multiarch{a} lib32asound2{a} lib32bz2-1.0{a}
> lib32ffi6{a} lib32gcc1{a} lib32ncurses5{a} lib32ncursesw5{a}
> lib32stdc++6{a} lib32tinfo5{a} lib32z1{a} libacl1{a} libattr1{a}
> libaudio2{a} libc6-i386{a} libcupsimage2{a} libdrm-intel1{a}
> libdrm-nouveau1a{a} libdrm-radeon1{a} libdrm2{a} libgdbm3{a}
> libgl1-mesa-dri{a} libgl1-mesa-glx{a} libglapi-mesa{a} liblcms1{a}
> libllvm2.9{a} libmng1{a} libmysqlclient16{ab} libpciaccess0{a}
> libqt4-dbus{a} libqt4-declarative{a} libqt4-designer{a} libqt4-network{a}
> libqt4-opengl{a} libqt4-qt3support{a} libqt4-script{a}
> libqt4-scripttools{a} libqt4-sql{a} libqt4-sql-mysql{a} libqt4-svg{a}
> libqt4-test{a} libqt4-xml{a} libqt4-xmlpatterns{a} libqtcore4{a}
> libqtgui4{a} libxss1{a} libxxf86vm1{a}
> 0 packages upgraded, 47 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
> Need to get 62.5 MB of archives. After unpacking 224 MB will be used.
> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
> libmysqlclient16: Conflicts: libmysqlclient16 but 5.1.58-1ubuntu1 is to be installed.
> libmysqlclient16: Depends: mysql-common (>= 5.1.58-1ubuntu1) which is a virtual package.
> Conflicts: libmysqlclient16 but 5.1.58-1ubuntu1 is installed.
> The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

This is because you're using aptitude, which has a different resolver and
handles uninstallable recommends differently than apt-get does. apt itself
has no problem installing ia32-libs without installing libmysqlclient16.

--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
<email address hidden> <email address hidden>

[Richard Crawford (rscrawford)]

I'm getting the same error but it appears that ia32-libs is not the issue for me.

Trying to upgrade from the command line (after replace natty with oneiric in /etc/apt/sources.list) gives me the following error:

$ sudo apt-get update
...
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Failed
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 kde-baseapps-data : Breaks: dolphin (< 4:4.6.80) but 4:4.6.5-0ubuntu1 is to be installed
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.

[kozimodo (forums-theo)]

So something has changed with aptitude's dependency resolution between natty and oneiric? I've been an aptitude man for at several years now and have never run into such a problem before.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 11:08:08PM -0000, kozimodo wrote:
> So something has changed with aptitude's dependency resolution between
> natty and oneiric?

No, aptitude's dependency resolution hasn't changed at all.

> I've been an aptitude man for at several years now and have never run into
> such a problem before.

It's a problem that doesn't generally occur in a release. Nevertheless, in
this case it's known that the recommends are not installable when the
packages are installed in a multiarch context.

--
Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/
<email address hidden> <email address hidden>

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

This is what breaks the upgrade:

Investigating (0) libgtk2.0-0 [ i386 ] < none -> 2.24.6-0ubuntu5 > ( libs )
Broken libgtk2.0-0:i386 Depends on libcups2 [ i386 ] < none -> 1.5.0-8 > ( libs ) (>= 1.4.0)
  Considering libcups2:i386 4 as a solution to libgtk2.0-0:i386 5
  Holding Back libgtk2.0-0:i386 rather than change libcups2:i386

That is because of:
2011-10-14 08:59:10,207 DEBUG Obsolete: ... libcupsys2 ...

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

@Richard Crawford (rscrawford): this is a sperate issue than the one that is described here. Could you please file a new bug with more context (i.e. if that is happening on a natty -> oneiric upgrade or on a normal oneiric install, your sources.list etc). Thanks.

[Jak Klein (jklein337)]

I know that this post is slightly old but i just wanted to let people know that I successfully made the the upgrade from 11.04 to 11.10 on Zorin OS 5.2. This may not be too much help because I'm still unsure of exactly what I did but I know that I used a Ubuntu Server 11.10 (x64 but you can probably use x86 or 32-bit) CD-ROM upgrade. I had some difficulties with getting my package manager running again but I read some other bug issues when I had sent my report and something to do with either apt-get dist-upgrade, apt-get upgrade, or apt-get update did the trick. And it even upgraded me to the Premium version of Zorin OS 5, which is suppose to cost a few bucks. My Wine and flash (used Runescape to test flash plugin) both still worked. Again I'm not %100 on what exactly I did (my old HDD went bad), but I'm positive the CD-ROM upgrade and doing something in the terminal with apt-get made this work. Hope this may help, and I'm trying to accomplish this feat again, but damned if I can remember.