Apt/Synaptic needs to reinstall package but can't find the archive for it

Question

Running Synaptic I get the following error message:

E: The package hl1440lpr needs to be reinstalled, but I can't find an archive for it.
E: Internal error opening cache (1). Please report.

Upon accepting the message, Synaptic quits.

Answer 1

Well we may need a few steps to fix this.

Start with

sudo dpkg --remove --force-all hl1440lpr

If that fails ...

# become root
sudo -i
cd /var/lib/dpkg/info
rm -rf hl1440lpr*

dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq hl1440lpr

exit

Confirm apt-get is fixed

# should return no errors
sudo apt-get update

Answer 2

It turns out, this wouldn't repair using the regular commands because I had disabled the multiverse repository in the software and updates window, after installing the package.

I read to do this in a post somewhere else, and it wasn't until another post I read that had me double check to make sure it was ENABLED, then I realized I never should have disabled that in the first place.

Enabling the multiverse repository again enabled me to reinstall the package.

---

So, generally if this sorts of errors happen, make sure you haven't disabled the software source from which this package comes.

Answer 3

dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq   broken---stuff

(plus file erasing)

works like a charm. synaptic should offer this function instead of dying and leaving people with a huge mess. synaptic is not user friendly.