After using dpkg, running the following command helped me to install the required dependencies:

sudo apt-get -f install

In all, your terminal should look like this:

$ sudo dpkg -i package_with_unsatisfied_dependencies.deb
dpkg: dependency problems prevent ... 
[additional messages]

$ sudo apt-get -f install
[apt messages]
Setting up [dependency]...
Setting up package_with_unsatisfied_dependencies...

Notice the line about Setting up package_with_unsatisfied_dependencies. This fixes (and completes) the installation of package_with_unsatisfied_dependencies.deb.

starting with apt 1.1 (available in Xenial (16.04), stretch) apt install also allows local files:

sudo apt install ./foo-1.2.3.deb

So much simpler and cleaner.

See the release announcment

You can install gdebi-core, which is the command line version of the GDebi package installer from 10.04 and earlier. In the newer versions of Ubuntu, the Software Center is used to install debs, which doesn't have a command line equivalent.

To install a deb package using gdebi, just run:

sudo gdebi my_package_1.0.deb

Gdebi

gdebi installs a deb package and its dependencies. To use it run:

sudo gdebi package.deb

In newer versions of Ubuntu, this is not installed by default, so you will need to install it from the repositories.

See man gdebi for a full list of options.

gdebi is the command line equivalent to the graphical tool of the same name that used to be included by default in Ubuntu. The command for the graphical tool is gdebi-gtk and has similar functionality:

running

sudo apt-get install -f

after installing package with dpkg may solve broken depencies (at least man apt-get say so...). Ill update when i will check it.

If you need to run a command that automatically resolves all of a .deb file's dependencies and installs the .deb file and its missing dependencies with the same command, you will need to update your installed software with sudo apt update. Then open the terminal, change directories using cd to the directory containing package-name.deb, and type:

apt install --simulate ./package-name.deb # This command does not require sudo.

where package-name.deb should be replaced by the name of a .deb file located in the current directory that you are trying to install.

The above command will not install anything, but it will print a message listing any dependencies of package-name.deb that do not exist in the default Ubuntu repositories. You will need to manually download and install the .deb files of these missing dependency packages in order to install package-name.deb. Run apt install --simulate ./manually-downloaded-package.deb before installing any of these manually downloaded dependency packages in order to check if these packages have any unmet dependencies themselves.

If the simulated command completes successfully, run the following command to install package-name.deb.

sudo apt install ./package-name.deb

There can be multiple .deb files in the same command if the .deb files are all located in the current directory.

sudo apt install ./package-name-1.deb ./package-name-2.deb

dpkg doesn't have dependency support. There is a way around it but that would require you to make a local database (and thus you would already know the dependencies) and it is considered obsolete (...).

Does it have to be command line? (server install?) If so also have a look at apt-get -f but be careful: solving dependencies after install could have you end up with a broken system.

gdebi (gui frontend) used to be able to do this but got replaced with USC.

How did you download the .deb. Some of the new 11.04 features is the handling of .deb downloaded from a website: it gets opend in USC so dependencies will be solved by the installer.

EDIT based on comment by andrew: sudo gdebi foo-1.2.3.deb would do the trick!!

As an alternative to gdebi-gtk you can use Ubuntu Software Center.

Double click on the package and an install button should be available.

You could create a file dpkg-dep-inst with the following content.

#!/bin/bash

DEBIAN_FILE1=$1
dpkg -i $DEBIAN_FILE1 || apt-get --fix-broken install

I assume you created the file in your home folder. Make it executable with chmod +x dpkg-dep-inst and move it to /usr/local/bin with sudo cp dpkg-dep-inst /usr/local/bin.

Now you can install the debian package with dependencies automatically with:

sudo dpkg-dep-inst foo-1.2.3.deb

I just ran into this problem. Calling apt-get install -f will not install recommended dependencies, though! The only workaround for this would be then to create a local repository and add to /etc/apt/sources.list, i.e.:

apt-ftparchive packages . > Packages && gzip < Packages > Packages.gz
sudo echo "deb file://$PWD /" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-get update