fixing broken packages in ubuntu : repost

Question

I have a lot of broken packages in my ubuntu 14.04 distro, which I am trying to fix.

I am following this answer by one of our community member. I followed the first two commands and after editing the file which he has mentioned I am not sure how can I determine which are the packages are broken and which one's to be removed.

When I am running apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev I am getting that broken packages issue.

Here's the result of running above command

 The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libmysqlclient-dev : Depends: libmysqlclient18 (= 5.5.49-0ubuntu0.14.04.1) but 10.0.25+maria-1~trusty is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Issue could be that I already have mariadb installed, although I am not sure how it got installed. I tried to remove it using the synaptic package manager but that didn't help.

Can someone please help me with that.I can share the chunk of that file If needed.

Include the output of your command apt-get install libmysqlclient-dev . — Rahul K Jha, May 16 '16 at 06:37
@mchid You see what we face as a starter. No replies and later it gets lost without any help/suggestion. — Suraj, May 16 '16 at 06:57
I've been trying numerous things and have tried numerous answers. If I put them as a list, someone might call "TOO MUCH INFO".
BTW, yes I tried removing the mariadb from the synaptic package manager as I read the same in some thread. that didn't help either. — Suraj, May 16 '16 at 07:12
Look, if there is too much info, people like me can always edit it out. If there's not enough info, all we can do is guess. — mchid, May 16 '16 at 07:15
I am working on a rails app. that has mysql. I don't know when and how this mariadb got installed. I don't know about it.
Updated the question — Suraj, May 16 '16 at 07:16
As for the other problem, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22120185/couldnt-create-database-for-rails-app — mchid, May 16 '16 at 07:53

mchid · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-16T07:33:22.303

3

Here is what we have so far.

First, edit your /etc/apt/sources.list file and remove mariadb by executing the following commands:

sudo sed -i 's/^.*mariadb.*$//g' /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-get update

Now, let's fix that broken package:

sudo apt-get install libmysqlclient18=5.5.49-0ubuntu0.14.04.1 libmysqlclient-dev

Please post any more errors, thanks.

edited May 16 '16 at 07:33

answered May 16 '16 at 07:25

mchid

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This works like a charm. So Mariadb was causing the problems for me – Suraj May 16 '16 at 07:43

fixing broken packages in ubuntu : repost

1 Answers1