0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. 1 not fully installed or removed

Question

I was trying to install the cubemap package, using sudo apt-get install cubemap. I can't remember whether I used the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+C while it was installing, or if the package just failed to install.

Anyway, now whenever I turn on my computer from a shutdown, a popup appears in the top left of my screen that says something along the lines of "system problem detected. do you want to report it?"

In addition, whenever I install, remove, upgrade, etc or do anything with apt-get, It will work fine, but at the end, after it finishes, it says E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) I cant remove the cubemap package, and I have tried apt-get remove cubemap(returns this), I also tried apt-get purging, and apt-get autoremoving cubemap, but none work to remove it.

I know that in the above linked pastebin it says "Package 'cubemap' is not installed, so not removed", but it also says " 1 not fully installed or removed.", and I think that the 1 package not fully removed is cubemap.

EDIT: link to the full apt-get session

Answer 1

The problem is the libsimgearcore2017.3.1 package, and it looks to be because the package is not doing adequate env setup/checking during installation.

Option 1: Safest Cleanup

It's complaining about a missing directory which is causing a symlink creation to fail. Try this:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/games/flightgear/
sudo apt-get -f install

If that doesn't fix it, then it may be looking for another sub directory. Try this:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/games/flightgear/Timezone
sudo apt-get -f install

Option 2: Not safe, or recommended

dpkg has an option for handling removal of packages which are in a broken state. It's a force, so use with care!

reinstreq

A package marked reinstreq is broken and requires reinstallation. These packages cannot be removed, unless forced with option --force-remove-reinstreq.

Try this:

sudo dpkg -r --force-remove-reinstreq libsimgearcore2017.3.1

Answer 2

Cubemap might be half-installed, try the following:

$ dpkg-query --status cubemap

It would provide you with some information about the state of the program.

Based on the outcome you can decide to

$ dpkg -r cubemap 

This removes everything except configuration files, or:

$ dpkg --purge cubemap

This removes everything including configuration files.

Then of course it is up to you whether to reinstall the package again or not, you can use:

$ sudo apt install cubemap

Answer 3

If a apt-get was interrupted during the installation and a packages database is not setup properly, it is best to reinstall the packages manual.

The reason is, that apt/apt-get does not recover from a "... not fully installed or removed" state. So do the following steps and see if the apt-get works after that:

# Download the library package
wget http://url.to.the.package/libsimgearcore2017.3.1.deb
# Since the package installer is broken, create the flightgear folder (if Timezone is the link)
sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/games/flightgear
# Manually install the package
sudo dpkg -i libsimgearcore2017.3.1.deb
# Check and reinstall cubemap
sudo apt-get check
sudo apt-get install cubemap
# If it does not work, retry with fix missing
sudo apt-get install --fix-missing

Answer 4

Synaptic Package Manager or gksu nautilus. These allow elevated (sudo) permissions to access the file system on Ubuntu with a GUI.

For terminal procedures try the following:

To find if cubemap is installed:

dpkg -l | cubemap

To check which packages are missing, edit with nanoor vim or gedit:

/var/lib/dpkg/info/cubemap.postinst

but since you don't know if it was post-install or pre-remove problem you might have to check and edit:

/var/lib/dpkg/info/cubemap.prerm `

There are few other commands which can be helpful.

Autoclean clears out the local repository of retrieved package files.

`sudo apt-get autoclean`

Force installation/removal of packages. ☠Use with caution

sudo apt-get --force-yes install <pkgname>

and

`sudo apt-get --force-yes remove <pkgname>`

Also as always, you can use dpkg to install, remove and purge packages.This is what Synaptic Package Manager facilitates with its GUI.

Install

sudo dpkg -i <pkgname>

Remove

sudo dpkg -r <pkgname>

Purge

sudo dpkg -P <pkgname>

Similar Q&A here: How to remove/install a package that is not fully installed?