dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration, pkg: error processing package and dependency problems – leaving unconfigured error states that package is installed but it is not configured as there are some dependent libraries which are missing. This error comes when you install a package using dpkg command in Debian/Ubuntu-based Linux Distribution.
In this article, let’s try to understand this error and find out the way to resolve it.
What is dpkg: dependency problems?
Ubuntu/Debian provides an APT package manager to install/uninstall the package. It takes care of downloading a package and all it’s a dependency from the Ubuntu Repository. Most of the software should be available in this standard repository, but that is not always true.
Some of the packages you can directly download from the website and install them using the dpkg utility available e.g Master PDF Editor.
DPKG is a command to install a .deb package in Ubuntu or any deb-based Linux Distro and this is the way you use it,
dpkg -i *.deb
Let’s elaborate using master-pdf-editor-5.4.38-qt5.amd64.deb which is .deb package for Master PDF Editor. When you run to install it using the below command,
sudo dpkg -i master-pdf-editor-5.4.38-qt5.amd64.deb
You may get the below errors,
sudo dpkg -i master-pdf-editor-5.4.38-qt5.amd64.deb Selecting previously unselected package master-pdf-editor. (Reading database ... 135637 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to unpack master-pdf-editor-5.4.38-qt5.amd64.deb ... Unpacking master-pdf-editor (5.4.38) ... dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of master-pdf-editor: master-pdf-editor depends on libqt5printsupport5 (>= 5.4.1); however: Package libqt5printsupport5 is not installed. dpkg: error processing package master-pdf-editor (--install): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured Processing triggers for hicolor-icon-theme (0.17-2) ... Processing triggers for gnome-menus (3.13.3-11ubuntu1) ... Processing triggers for desktop-file-utils (0.23-1ubuntu3) ... Processing triggers for mime-support (3.60ubuntu1) ... Errors were encountered while processing:
This happens because master-pdf-editor depends on libqt5printsupport5 while Package libqt5printsupport5 is not installed.
(Solution) dpkg: dependency problems
Use the apt-get command with the -f option after dpkg to resolve the dpkg: dependency problems issue(shown below). This command tries to fix the broken package by installing the missing dependencies.
sudo apt-get install -f
Summary
dpkg command does not install dependencies and leaves the package in an unconfigured state. But, the apt-get command provides an easy way to fix this issue. You can refer to the discussion askubuntu and Stack Overflow for additional information.
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