up vote 11 down vote favorite
3
 
$ apt-get install -f -o 'Dpkg::Options::=--force-confmiss --force-all --force-confnew --overwrite-conffiles' --reinstall at-spi2-core
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 kde-workspace-bin : Depends: qdbus but it is not going to be installed
 libqt4-dbus : Depends: qdbus (= 4:4.8.5+git192-g085f851+dfsg-2ubuntu4) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).

I don't quite understand "but it is not going to be installed". Why doesn't it install it then?

apt-get -f install does not help, it does nothing:

$ apt-get install -f
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
share|improve this question
    
You could try to find out why qdbus is not being installed by installing it yourself: sudo apt-get install qdbus. – Jos Dec 22 '14 at 11:15
3  
@Jos: I did that. Now it works. However, that doesn't really answer my question or what the problem was. – Albert Dec 22 '14 at 11:15
    
I suppose it was the combination of options in your original apt-get command that prevented apt from installing additional dependencies. – Jos Dec 22 '14 at 11:20
    
Here it was that I missed main and only had deb http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ wily universe multiverse in addition to trusty. Then, apt wanted to install a package from universe, which depended on versions available in wily/main only and thus could not be installed. – koppor Jan 23 '16 at 14:45
    
Try adding the missing package to the install command: sudo apt-get install --reinstall at-spi2-core qdbus libqt4-dbus – antivirtel Apr 2 '16 at 20:58
up vote 0 down vote

I also had the same issue while installing Guake; it showed unmet dependencies with Python. Even trying to reinstall python using sudo apt-get install --reinstall python did nothing.

Finally,

Step-1: I had to remove and install python again using:

Note: Uninstalling python leads to removing many other dependencies which may break the installed Ubuntu, so be careful while uninstalling python

sudo apt-get purge python

sudo apt-get install python

Step-2: Install the original package (in my case it was guake)

sudo apt-get install guake

This installed all necessary dependencies.

Try the same procedure w/ your packages and it should work for you too.

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1  
Removing Python, even only temporarily, is a bad idea as it will likely remove lots of depending packages with it and it is needed to run many important system commands. – Byte Commander Sep 14 '17 at 20:03
    
I was aware of this possibility but i wasn't able to solve my issue otherwise....searched a lot but could not find a working way....as of now my ubuntu has not broken ..... waiting for it in future ;) ... – vinaykumar2491 Sep 14 '17 at 20:48
up vote 6 down vote

As this question also didn't help, I found on this LinuxQuestions thread a hint that helped me:

Do you have a mixed /etc/apt/sources.list? It appears that you're trying to install one package from a newer repository but that it doesn't have access to a repository with the newer dependencies.

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up vote 9 down vote

This worked for me.

$ sudo apt-get install <missing-package-1> <missing-package-2> ...

I don't know why this is necessary, but manually installing the problematic packages worked.

After installing the first round of unmet dependencies, another one popped up, but I repeated the process and it sorted itself out after two cycles.

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7  
Wow, it really is this simple... It makes me wonder why it wouldn't install in the first place? – Jacksonkr Apr 19 '16 at 3:47

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