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Accepted
John Carter
Asked: 2024-03-07 07:48:58 +0800 CST

Error while installing Balena Etcher

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I was trying to create a bootable USB with BalenaEtcher but encountered an error when installing the program.

I downloaded the main .deb file from the github release page but when I run sudo apt install ./balena-etcher_1.19.5_amd64.deb:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'balena-etcher' instead of './balena-etcher_1.19.5_amd64.deb'
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 balena-etcher : Depends: gconf-service but it is not installable
                 Depends: gconf2 but it is not installable
                 Depends: libgconf-2-4 but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

I guess this may be connected with me using 23.10. Does anyone know how to fix this?

EDIT (as proposed by comment)

sudo apt install gconf-service:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Package gconf-service is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'gconf-service' has no installation candidate

sudo apt install gconf2:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Package gconf2 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'gconf2' has no installation candidate

sudo apt install libgconf-2-4:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Package libgconf-2-4 is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'libgconf-2-4' has no installation candidate

sudo apt update:

Hit:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu mantic InRelease
Hit:2 https://brave-browser-apt-release.s3.brave.com stable InRelease          
Hit:3 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu mantic-security InRelease              
Hit:4 https://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable InRelease                  
Hit:5 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu mantic-updates InRelease             
Hit:6 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu mantic-backports InRelease           
Hit:7 https://hub-dist.unity3d.com/artifactory/hub-debian-prod-local stable InRelease
Hit:8 https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mjasnik/ppa/ubuntu mantic InRelease
Hit:9 https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mkusb/ppa/ubuntu mantic InRelease
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
All packages are up to date.

apt policy gconf-service:

gconf-service:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: (none)
  Version table:
apt

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Gnome has moved away from gconf to dconf long time ago. Last releases that did package gconf is Ubuntu Lunar 23.04 and Debian Bookworm 12. Then it was dropped from later releases.

    These good sites to check status of any package:

    Found it is already reported upstream: Debian Testing has removed gconf2 packages. #4096

    • Best option is to use appimage package or alternative tool, till fixed upstream.

    • Another, option is to force installing gconf from old release repository. But this method is dirty and result is not predictable, it can even break Gnome.

    • If this is special case that this tool is the only solution , you may setup older Ubuntu in VirtualBox and install Balena Etcher in it. (This probably will not work in very weak PC like chrome notebooks)

    • 2