1

All solutions listed here for removing MySQL fails:

Uninstall MySQL from Ubuntu 16.04

and

Removing MariaDB Installs MySQL and vice-versa

These are my errors:

$ sudo apt-get purge mysql*
$ sudo apt-get autoremove
$ sudo apt-get autoclean
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
$ sudo apt-get install mysql



$ apt-get autoremove
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  mysql-server-core-5.7
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 131 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 46.2 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 287191 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing mysql-server-core-5.7 (5.7.22-0ubuntu0.16.04.1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.5-1) ...
Setting up mysql-common (5.7.22-0ubuntu0.16.04.1) ...
update-alternatives: error: alternative path /etc/mysql/my.cnf.fallback doesn't exist
dpkg: error processing package mysql-common (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mysql-client-5.7:
 mysql-client-5.7 depends on mysql-common (>= 5.5); however:
  Package mysql-common is not configured yet.

dpkg: error processing package mysql-client-5.7 (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.

Errors were encountered while processing:
 mysql-common
 mysql-client-5.7
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
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3
  • This isn't a BBCODE forum. Use StackExchange code formatting, select the text you want to code-format, then click the button that looks like this in your editing window: {}
    – Thomas Ward ♦
    May 20, 2018 at 3:17
  • did you do this with mysql still running? If so...
    – Rinzwind
    May 20, 2018 at 7:47
  • mysql not running. Doesn't start on startup I always start with sudo systemctl start mysql
    – jeffschips
    May 20, 2018 at 12:55

2 Answers 2

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0

It looks like there is an error while configuring mysql-common, and that causes a dependency problem that results in mysql-client-5.7 failing to be removed.

The configuration error is error: alternative path /etc/mysql/my.cnf.fallback doesn't exist, so naturally i'd try to create that path by running sudo touch /etc/mysql/my.cnf.fallback

After that running sudo dpkg-reconfigure mysql-common will reveal if the error is resolved, if it is, you can likely remove mysql now using sudo apt-get purge mysql*

If this did not help, please provide the output/errors of these commands so that me and others can determine the problem further.

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2
  • Thanks for your assistance. Here is the result of your suggestion, after touching /etc/mysql/my.cnf.fallback sudo dpkg-reconfigure mysql-common /usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: mysql-common is broken or not fully installed
    – jeffschips
    May 20, 2018 at 12:48
  • This page askubuntu.com/editing-help#comment-formatting explains how to format comments, however, the suggestion to add to two spaces for a line break does not work. Are linebreaks not allowed in comments despite the advise from stackexchange stating in the markdown editing help age to add 2 spaces for a line break?
    – jeffschips
    May 20, 2018 at 13:32
0

Solved:

There were two architecture libraries on my system for mysql.

libmysqlclient20:amd64 libmysqlclient20:i386

I removed the i386 and all is solved.

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