Upgradable...cannot be installed... unmet dependencies?

Here is a photo of my results of “Run ‘apt list --upgradable’…”
I had 8 persistent items like this after upgrading to Pop!_OS22.04, but I thought they would ultimately resolve. They did not. So I ‘sudo apt removed’ them one by one. Yesterday after that I had no ‘packages have been held back:’ messages when I ran ‘sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y’.
This morning I have another one. Can you help me understand what is happening and if there is anything I can do about it?
Thank you!!
–Diane Albers

Have you tried:
sudo apt upgrade --fix-missing

sudo apt upgrade --fix-missing did not work
I tried:
sudo apt upgrade base-files
and it worked!
I am reasonably new to Linux (Sept-2021).
Since updating to the 22.04, there ‘seems’ to be more of this issue.
Is this typical after a new release? Is this ‘bugs’ awaiting fixing?
Is this “nobody knows why this is happening”?

Glad you got that fixed.

Usually a new release of LTS is stable, but there may always be issues that show up or something gets corrupted during an update or locales don’t get set right during install. It can get annoying.

Make sure you also join your distro community forums and subscribe to your release topics, there will be your greatest asset of information for bugs and annoyances based on your distro.

This is my result today. I have never seen so many problems! I tried sudo apt upgrade --fix-missing with no change. Still 61 packages held back and not upgraded, although the message says: "61 packages can be upgraded. Run ‘apt list --upgradable’ to see them. (Nothing in forums for Pop!_OS that I can see.)
Puzzled.

ok, can you be a little more specific on which packages your removed?
give these a try in the same order.

sudo apt autoremove
sudo apt autoclean
sudo apt update

I tried everything and I’m still getting the following when typing “sudo apt update”
W: http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/dists/focal-pgdg/InRelease: Key is stored in legacy trusted.gpg keyring (/etc/apt/trusted.gpg), see the DEPRECATION section in apt-key(8) for details.
N: Skipping acquire of configured file ‘main/binary-i386/Packages’ as repository ‘Index of /ubuntu jammy InRelease’ doesn’t support architecture ‘i386’

@whoolio welcome back!! What is it that you are trying to accomplish? A little background on your issue would be great.

Yep, I did all of those things yesterday too… I will try them now…
Done. No effect. I see lots of libreoffice items in that list of 61.

BigDaveAZ,
The issue started after the upgrade from 20.04 LTS to 22.04 LTS.
I run the command: sudo apt upgrade
Results:
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree… Done
Reading state information… Done
Calculating upgrade… Done
The following packages have been kept back:
libegl-mesa0 libgbm1 libgl1-mesa-dri libglapi-mesa libglx-mesa0 libpq5
libxatracker2 mesa-va-drivers mesa-vdpau-drivers mesa-vulkan-drivers
python3-distupgrade ubuntu-release-upgrader-core ubuntu-release-upgrader-gtk
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 13 not upgraded.

sudo apt upgrade
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree… Done
Reading state information… Done
Calculating upgrade… Done
The following packages have been kept back:
libegl-mesa0 libgbm1 libgl1-mesa-dri libglapi-mesa libglx-mesa0 libpq5 libxatracker2 mesa-va-drivers mesa-vdpau-drivers
mesa-vulkan-drivers python3-distupgrade ubuntu-release-upgrader-core ubuntu-release-upgrader-gtk
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 13 not upgraded.

@whoolio stupid question - did you sudo apt update before sudo apt upgrade? @vasileios is a whiz at this stuff - I am sure he will pop in soon enough. Is that all you are trying to do - update and upgrade your system? did you do an install right before this happened? don’t worry I won’t ask if you tried turning it off and turning it back on again, mate. LOL Cheers!!

@whoolio and @elleneia you both seem to be experiencing some upgrade issues though @whoolio yours is different and warrants a separate thread as to not confuse the 2. What my quick take from yours is that you have added a ppa that does not work with 22.04 recently?

@elleneia we can try a couple of things here,

First: sudo apt update && sudo apt list --upgradable (even though you may have just done it, ALWAYS run the update first)
Second: sudo apt-get --with-new-pkgs upgrade

If that doesn’t install the held back packages try a manual install of them with:
sudo apt install <list of package from apt list upgradable>

you can simply copy the entire output of apt list --upgradable and paste it without the < >

send back any errors you may receive.

Hey, @elleneia!
Unless you need the Italian language, then you really don’t need this process. However, if you wish to go through with it, the best way is to purge the conflicting package (which is itself… confusingly enough).

sudo apt purge language-pack-gnome-it

And then run a:

sudo apt update

To see what is left to update.

Hi Vasileios! I saw this reply before I saw Mr. Deplorable’s. I DO NOT need the ITALIAN language (sadly I only speak English!), so I did:
sudo apt purge language-pack-gnome-it
sudo apt update
No change to: “81 packages can be upgraded” result. Proceeding next with Mr. Deplorable’s instructions (above your reply).

1 Like

Thank you @MrDeplorableUSA

1 Like

WAIT!! I decided to do ONE MORE shut down, and reboot after I replied.
Then did my normal update. ALL SEEMS SOLVED!!

Another step that I had tried, after all your instructions, was to once again go into my Pop!_Shop and check the updates/drivers list. I found that ONE of the stupid nvidia drivers had apparently been installed recently (I always update one-by-one to make sure I don’t install them–but apparently I failed. There does not seem to be a way to REMOVE THEM from my Pop!_Shop updates list.). I UNINSTALLED the one that was installed.

I think after that I sent an initial reply to you, but THEN ShutDown and ReStarted, and sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y WORKED!! ALL BACK to NORMAL.

Thank you, thank you so much for your time and help!!

–Diane Albers (elleneia)

P.S. One more thought: Do you suppose that I could INSTALL and then UNINSTALL those other two pesky nvidia drivers, in the hopes that they will then disappear from my Pop!_Shop installed apps/drivers/updates page? I have been afraid to mess with them, but the one I inadvertently installed and uninstalled is now GONE from the list.

2 Likes

Hey @elleneia!
Yes, installing and uninstalling tends to - at times - fix the issue. However, if there are any remnants, you can do this via terminal. First, check to see what’s still lurking:

dpkg -l | grep -I nvidia

This will give you the entire list of what is still on your system. If there’s stuff there, then you can send them all packing by executing:

sudo apt remove --purge '^nvidia-.*'

And that should do it. :slight_smile:

Thank you!! There were about 5 items still ‘lurking’.

I executed the command to send them packing, and now they are ALL GONE!

Woohoo!
–Diane

3 Likes