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David Z
Asked: 2010-08-09 14:40:02 +0800 CST

Why would the aptitude binary be missing if its package is installed?

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Yesterday I upgraded a laptop from Kubuntu 9.04 (Lucid) to 9.10 (Karmic). Then afterwards I tried to install some software

$ sudo aptitude install dont-remember-what-it-was

and I get

sudo: aptitude: command not found

Wait, what? How can aptitude be missing? And it's not just that - apt-get and dpkg also somehow mysteriously vanished from the system. I've manually checked in /usr/bin and all the other directories in $PATH and verified that the files actually do not exist.

$ ls /usr/bin/aptitude
ls: cannot access /usr/bin/aptitude: No such file or directory

Thankfully I have two graphical package managers available, Adept Installer and KPackageKit. Both of them report that the aptitude package is installed. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling it through the GUI, just to be safe, and the uninstall/reinstall seemed to go off without a hitch. But the actual program binaries are still missing.

Is this something normal? If not, has anyone ever heard of it happening? Is it likely that the missing programs will magically reappear if I upgrade to 10.04?

EDIT: I have no idea what was going on, but after leaving the computer off overnight and a couple of reboots, the problem seems to have fixed itself. All the right files seem to be there.

package-management dpkg apt aptitude

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    That is definitely not normal!

    To get dpkg and apt-get back you can do the following: Download dpkg_1.15.8.2ubuntu3_i386.deb and apt_0.7.25.3ubuntu9.1_i386.deb

    ar x dpkg_1.15.8.2ubuntu3_i386.deb
sudo tar -C / -xzf data.tar.gz
ar x apt_0.7.25.3ubuntu9.1_i386.deb
sudo tar -C / -xzf data.tar.gz

    Note that some packages at internally compressed with lzma instead of gzip, so one would have to use 

    sudo tar --lzma -xf data.tar.lzma

    Afterwards you should be able to do apt-get update and then install aptitude with

    apt-get install --reinstall aptitude

    Warning!
    I really cant recommend that people install packages like this! Be sure to look at the configuration of the specific package, and if any dependency is missing! And if possible reinstall the packages through apt or dpkg afterwards.

    • 7

  2. This is definitely not normal. I suggest you do a filesystemcheck and also check installed files with md5sum like this:

    md5sum -c /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.md5sums 2>/dev/null | grep -v OK$

    And then maybe reinstall the affected packages with:

    sudo apt-get install --reinstall aptitude
    • 1

  3. When you upgraded, Aptitude was uninstalled for some unknown reason. Most likely, it was a bug in the upgrade. Or, Aptitude was incompatible with the new software.

    • 0