4

When I use apt to get a package, I have been receiving the same error message. Here is an example trying to install wicd (which is already installed):

    Reading package lists...
Building dependency tree...
Reading state information...
wicd is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
3 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Setting up tex-common (2.06) ...
debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Dialog
debconf: (Dialog frontend requires a screen at least 13 lines tall and 31 columns wide.)
debconf: falling back to frontend: Readline
Running mktexlsr. This may take some time... done.
No packages found matching texlive-base.
dpkg: error processing tex-common (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of texlive-binaries:
 texlive-binaries depends on tex-common (>= 2.00); however:
  Package tex-common is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing texlive-binaries (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of dvipng:
 dvipng depends on texlive-base-bin; however:
  Package texlive-base-bin is not installed.
  Package texlive-binaries which provides texlive-base-bin is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing dvipng (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.
No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.
Errors were encountered while processing:
 tex-common
 texlive-binaries
 dvipng
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I'm not sure if this is a problem with apt or with dpkg, but it certainly doesn't look good!

4 Answers4

1

This is usually fixed with two commands:

sudo apt-get update

To update your database to the latest packages.

sudo apt-get -f upgrade

To upgrade and fix those packages.

Javier Rivera
  • 35,153
0

It looks like you are missing texlive-base Install texlive-base.

You can install it in the Software Center from that link, or in the Terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) with:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install texlive-base
Community
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BMitch
  • 101
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    It appears that he was having a problem because apt couldn't find a package called texlive-base in any of his computer's repositories. So apt-get install texlive-base will probably return the same error. – Firefeather Feb 10 '11 at 21:31
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@Tshepang, Firefeater: The command was "sudo apt-get install X" where X is anything I've tried to install lately. I don't actually know whether or not I'm using the 3 packages it complains about. I certainly don't use them directly, but maybe some other thing I do use wants them.

@Javier Rivera: I ran the two commands you suggested. Many things happened, things were downloaded, and at the end, I got (again)

Errors were encountered while processing:
 tex-common
 texlive-binaries
 dvipng
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
0

Try sudo apt-get clean and sudo apt-get autoremove to see if this clears the error.

If you haven't tried to purge the packages, you can try that as well:

sudo apt-get purge texlive-base-bin
sudo apt-get purge texlive-binaries
sudo apt-get purge tex-common

Here's a launchpad bug page which I believe has relevant information.
There is also a thread on ubuntuforums where someone had a very similar problem.

belacqua
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