I’m running Ubuntu Mate on an Odroid XU4, sort of an upscale RasPi3 on steroids. All packages were up to date until just before apt-upgrade broke a few days ago.
drew@drew:~$ sudo apt-get update
… Looks normal no errors reported
drew@drew:~$ sudo apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
Calculating upgrade… Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
avahi-dnsconfd
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
3 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0 B/13.5 kB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
(Reading database … 259676 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack …/avahi-dnsconfd_0.6.32~rc+dfsg-1ubuntu2.1_armhf.deb …
Job for avahi-daemon.socket canceled.
dpkg: warning: subprocess old pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: trying script from the new package instead …
Job for avahi-daemon.socket canceled.
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/avahi-dnsconfd_0.6.32~rc+dfsg-1ubuntu2.1_armhf.deb (–unpack):
subprocess new pre-removal script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/avahi-dnsconfd_0.6.32~rc+dfsg-1ubuntu2.1_armhf.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
<//>
Hmm. Sometime the cache gets screwed up and the follown helps.
drew@drew:~$ sudo apt-get clean
W: Problem unlinking the file apt-fast - Clean (21: Is a directory)
But, not this time!
Wanted to remove and reinstall the avahi-dnsconfd package, but the following scared me away.
drew@drew:~$ sudo apt-get remove avahi-dnsconfd
[sudo] password for drew:
Sorry, try again.
[sudo] password for drew:
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
avahi-dnsconfd ubuntu-mate-core ubuntu-mate-desktop
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 3 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
3 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 122 kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.
I vaguely remember an incantation for removing a package, but leaving it’s dependencies in place, but I’ve been googling, reading man pages, and can’t find it.