12.04 LTS upgrade error on libuuid1

Question

In the process of trying to fix a problem with skype on my Ubuntu 12.04 LTS host, I managed to break libuuid1, and I have tried everything I could think of:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install libuuid1
sudo apt-get upgrade -f
sudo apt-get -o APT::Immediate-Configure=no upgrade
sudo apt-get autoremove

but keep getting the same error which looks like a vicious circle:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libuuid1 : Breaks: libuuid1:i386 (!= 2.20.1-1ubuntu3) but 2.20.1-5.3 is installed
 libuuid1:i386 : Breaks: libuuid1 (!= 2.20.1-5.3) but 2.20.1-1ubuntu3 is installed

Does anyone have any suggestion on how to fix this, short of reinstalling Ubuntu?

Answer 1

I found this Ubuntu Forum thread helpful. Following the instruction from post #4 (The author of which shares source as Steps 1-4 from Ubuntu documentation ) there once booted to live cd and then chrooted Finally I did

dpkg --configure -a
apt-get download libuuid1
gdebi ./libuuid1*

which was from a cd live session.

On rebooting there are several startup errors that one might encounter what caused the packages post-installation script (postinstall.sh) to fail. These service startup errors will be due to the face that hose services cannot be started while running from the live CD. At this point you should be able to restart and boot to the 12.04 installation then re-run

sudo dpkg --configure -a 
sudo apt-get upgrade

and . After a rebooting into your shiny new 12.04, those errors will go away!.