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ExplodingKittens
Asked: 2015-01-14 11:33:46 +0800 CST

OpenJDK-7-JRE throws "broken packages" error (14.04 LTS)

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I have an application that requires the Java JRE. I decided to go ahead and install the JRE from the repositories. Normally, the only issue I would have with this is it taking forever and a day to download. However, this time, I get this...

ben@ben-Aspire-5250:~$ sudo apt-get install default-jre
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
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:
 default-jre : Depends: default-jre-headless (= 2:1.7-51) but it is not going to be installed
               Depends: openjdk-7-jre (>= 7~u3-2.1.1) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

When trying to install openjdk-7-jre-headless directly, I get this:

ben@ben-Aspire-5250:~$ sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jre-headless
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
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:
 openjdk-7-jre-headless : Depends: tzdata-java but it is not going to be installed
                          Depends: libnss3-1d (>= 3.12.9+ckbi-1.82-0ubuntu4) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

I looked in Synaptic and tried to "fix broken packages", but Synaptic found nothing to do. When I try sudo apt-get -f install, I just get:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.

What could be going wrong here?

It's worth noting that I changed all instances of us.archive.ubuntu.com to just archive.ubuntu.com, because the US servers were unstable when I installed. I haven't had any other troubles up until now.

14.04

2 Answers

  1. Go to Ubuntu Software Center and search for the package software-properties-common, install that package if it is not installed.

    Open your dash by pressing the Super Key (Windows Key) and type software sources. Go into the application that appears and place a check mark on all the packages present there.

    After doing it, execute the following commands one by one, in a terminal window ( Ctrl+Alt+T ) :

    sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
    sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
    sudo apt-get autoremove
    sudo apt-get autoclean

    and then run,

    sudo apt-get install default-jre to install the package.

    • 3

  2. I had a hunch that the problem may have been caused by me using archive.ubuntu.com instead of us.archive.ubuntu.com. Sure enough, upon restoring the old sources.list file, the problem has been solved.

    Thanks for the help!

    EDIT

    Turns out it was not caused by using the wrong server for archive.ubuntu.com, but actually a problem with not having the update repositories enabled. tzdata needed to be updated in order for JRE to work.

    I had to go in through the Software & Updates application and enable updates on the Updates tab. After that, I'm able to install JRE.

    Thanks again for the help. I can finally put this problem to bed.

    • 2