Home / ubuntu / Questions / 1027497
Accepted
Сергій Анатолійович
Asked: 2018-04-24 07:28:26 +0800 CST

Error when installing mailutils on Ubuntu 16.04

  • 772

When we try to install, remove, update mailutils we always have same error with status 'half-installed'. Can help me? The output of:

sudo apt install mailutils

is: 

Reading package lists... Done 
Building dependency tree        
Reading state information... Done 
mailutils is already the newest version (1:2.99.99-1ubuntu2). 
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 136 not upgraded. 1 not fully installed or removed. 
Need to get 0 B/90.4 kB of archives. After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used. 
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y 
dpkg: error processing package patch (--configure):  package patch is not ready for configuration  cannot configure (current status 'half-installed') 
Errors were encountered while processing:  patch 
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
software-installation dpkg mailutils

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    In this case, I would try the following to attempt a repair:
    First, try using apt itself to repair the package.

    sudo apt install -f

    Then, try re-installing the package:

    sudo apt install --reinstall mailutils

    If this fails, the next step is to go one level below apt, and use dpkg:

    sudo dpkg --configure -a

    If all else fails, try removing with apt, and then re-installing:

    sudo apt purge mailutils

    and be sure to back up any configs you want to keep, just in case.

    If even that doesn't work, try dpkg again:

    sudo dpkg --remove mailutils

    followed by apt:

    sudo apt install mailutils

    Should that not work, you may have a corrupted .deb file cached, or a broken dependency so run:

    sudo apt clean
sudo apt autoclean
sudo apt autoremove

    and then re-start all the steps.

    • 0