For some unknown reason the package dependencies on my Ubuntu 15.10 got messed up. sudo apt-get -f install fails because the installation of ncurses-bin fails with
unable to make backup symlink for './usr/bin/infotocap': No such file or directory
As a silly workaround I tried create an empty file and directory intotocap relative to . and changing the current directory, but /, /root, /tmp and $HOME didn't work.
I unpackaged the .deb archive and grepped for intotocap, but it doesn't occur which leaves me with a lot of confusion.
No apport report written because the error message indicates an issue on the local system is printed to console which doesn't make sense to me because trying to backup an inexisting directory is an installation script, i.e. no local, error for me.
The complete output:
$ sudo apt-get install -f
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
ifupdown libncurses5 libncurses5:i386 libncurses5-dev libncursesw5 libpam-systemd libplymouth4 libsmartcols1 libsystemd0 libsystemd0:i386 libtinfo-dev libtinfo5-dbg
libudev-dev libudev1 libudev1:i386 mdadm ncurses-bin plymouth plymouth-label plymouth-theme-ubuntu-logo plymouth-theme-ubuntu-text systemd systemd-dbg udev util-linux
Suggested packages:
rdnssd ncurses-doc desktop-base plymouth-themes systemd-ui systemd-container util-linux-locales
The following packages will be upgraded:
ifupdown libncurses5 libncurses5:i386 libncurses5-dev libncursesw5 libpam-systemd libplymouth4 libsmartcols1 libsystemd0 libsystemd0:i386 libtinfo-dev libtinfo5-dbg
libudev-dev libudev1 libudev1:i386 mdadm ncurses-bin plymouth plymouth-label plymouth-theme-ubuntu-logo plymouth-theme-ubuntu-text systemd systemd-dbg udev util-linux
25 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3984 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0 B/38,0 MB of archives.
After this operation, 2.551 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [J/n] j
Preconfiguring packages ...
(Reading database ... 971243 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../ncurses-bin_6.0+20160213-1ubuntu1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking ncurses-bin (6.0+20160213-1ubuntu1) over (5.9+20150516-2ubuntu1) ...
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/ncurses-bin_6.0+20160213-1ubuntu1_amd64.deb (--unpack):
unable to make backup symlink for './usr/bin/infotocap': No such file or directory
No apport report written because the error message indicates an issue on the local system
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.4-1) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/ncurses-bin_6.0+20160213-1ubuntu1_amd64.deb
I experienced with error on 15.10 for months (also reported at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ncurses/+bug/1523196), but it never kept me from installing packages. No I did a sudo do-release-upgrade --devel-release since I wanted to test some features of 16.04. The upgrade in VirtualBox went without problem, so that I'm sure that this is not a matter of using packages of the unreleased 16.04.
I can't uninstall ncurses-bin because it's an essential package.
