How to remove a lot of broken packages (so that I can upgrade Ubuntu)?

Question

As I try to upgrade to Ubuntu 16.06, I ran into the "Unable to calculate upgrade issue", due to

An unresolvable problem occurred while calculating the upgrade: E:Unable to correct problems, you have held broken 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

This answer shows how to remove all the "Broken" packages. But my list is very long (100+), and I can't possibly delete them all by hand.

Is there a better way to handle this?

Are you using PPAs? what is the output of ls /etc/apt/sources.list.d/? — Anwar, Aug 26 '16 at 17:41
I use a lot of PPAs, I can count 15+ running that commands. Do I have to lose them all? That makes the upgrading process quite painful. — Heisenberg, Aug 26 '16 at 17:47
Remove every single ppa using ppa-purge. otherwise you can't upgrade — Anwar, Aug 26 '16 at 18:08
Is there a way to save them and quickly import them back after upgrading? — Heisenberg, Aug 26 '16 at 18:19
Yes, save those files somewhere. after upgrading you can copy back only changing release name there. — Anwar, Aug 26 '16 at 18:31

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 29 '18 at 11:55

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Look at /var/log/dist-upgrade/main.log. The broken packages are likely a misnomer, as apt is just working through the dependency list and probably finds the correct solution for all of them.

answered Jan 29 '18 at 11:55

SystemParadox

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 29 '18 at 12:51

You may try using the Synaptic Package Manager; use

$ sudo apt install synaptic

to install Synaptic. After that, click Custom Filters -> Broken and mark all broken packages for removal. Finally, apply the changes and you should be prepared for the upgrade once you remove or temporarily disable all the PPAs.

How to remove a lot of broken packages (so that I can upgrade Ubuntu)?

2 Answers2