I was upgrading from 13.10 to 14.04 (dev for now, stable in a few hours) using do-release-upgrade and encountered the following problem:
Can not upgrade
Your python install is corrupted. Please fix the '/usr/bin/python' symlink.
I solved the problem after messing around a bit, so I'd like to share my solution here. Hope this could help someone.
My problem turned out to be solely due to an altered /usr/bin/python symlink as suggested in the error message. I was using update-alternatives with /usr/bin/python so it was pointing to /etc/alternatives/python. Turned out that do-release-upgrade is really strict with this symlink and merely selecting python2.7 with update-alternatives isn't enough, so I ended up forcing it to its original state:
sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/python2.7 /usr/bin/python
And that solved the problem.
If this doesn't work for you, then I guess you have a genuinely corrupted python install. I'd suggest
sudo apt-get install --reinstall python
/etc/alternatives/python symlinked to /usr/bin/python2.7? did something else has higher priority?
/usr/bin/python2.7 is the actual binary, it should never be the symlink, the symlink is the /etc/alternatives/python..do you mind checking it again?
/usr/bin/python is a symlink to /etc/alternatives/python (of course /usr/bin/python2.7 is the binary, but that's not the problem here).
/etc/alternatives/python is then symlinked to whatever you selected (not necessarily /usr/bin/python2.7 — why would you even need update-alternatives in that case?), but the point is symlinking is not allowed for /usr/bin/python when you do-release-upgrade.
this one is correct:
sudo update-alternatives --remove-all python
sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/python2.7 /usr/bin/python
update-alternatives --remove-all python
Oct 10, 2016 at 17:04
In Ubuntu 18.10 there is still the same issue.
The /usr/bin/python is linked to an older version. Even later than 2.7 are available but this super-smart process is asking (in 18.10!) for P 2.7. So I gave it and it was accepted.
This solved it for me:
1) delete /usr/bin/python doing sudo rm /usr/bin/python
2) Create a new link sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/python2.7 /usr/bin/python
In 18.10 I could NOT use sudo update-alternatives --remove-all python or sudo apt-get install --reinstall python .
Works for me. Hope it helps you, too.
ls -sf overrides the target so 1) is pointless, and 2) is exactly what my answer told you to do. What a waste...
sudo rm is still pointless.
If you run into this regarding /usr/bin/python3 then:
sudo update-alternatives --remove-all python3
sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/python3.6 /usr/bin/python3
Make sure to symlink python3.6 and not 3.7. At least that was required when upgrading Ubuntu 18.10 to 19.04.
For Ubuntu 19.04 the default python version is 3.7 . I got same error while upgrading to Ubuntu 19.10, and, the following helped:
sudo apt-get install --reinstall python3
sudo ln -sf /usr/bin/python3.7 /usr/bin/python3
In case you have very serious problems with your python package, the only way left is to force remove it, and then reinstall it:
sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq --force-depends python3
sudo apt-get -f install
