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Re: Internal error: couldn't generate list of packages to download



On 2020-09-26 at 05:18, Stephen P. Molnar wrote:

> On 09/25/2020 08:53 PM, The Wanderer wrote:
> 
>> On 2020-09-25 at 07:48, Stephen P. Molnar wrote:

>>> This morning this resulted in the error
>>>
>>> The following partially installed packages will be configured:

I somehow managed to miss noticing this line before. I think it may be
the key to resolving the issue; see below.

>>>     brscan4
>> As I think at least one other person has noted, this does not appear to
>> be available in the Debian archives, at least not as far as I've managed
>> to determine.
>
> That's correct. It is pat of the Brother Laser Printer driver package.

Where did that come from? Did it (ever) have a repository configured, or
was it downloaded as a standalone .deb?

>>> No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
>>> 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
>>> E: Can't find a source to download version '0.4.8-1' of 'brscan4:amd64'
>>> After unpacking 0 B will be used.
>>> E: Can't find a source to download version '0.4.8-1' of 'brscan4:amd64'
>> To my eye, this looks as if something is telling apt that version
>> 0.4.8-1 is available somewhere, and the upgrade session is deciding that
>> it needs to install that version, but then none of the configured
>> sources include that version (and it's not already cached locally).
>>
>> What do
>>
>> $ apt-cache policy brscan4
>> $ apt-cache rdepends brscan4
>>
>> say?
>>
> Thank you for your reply.
> 
> comp@AbNormal:~$ apt-cache policy brscan4
> brscan4:
>    Installed: 0.4.8-1
>    Candidate: 0.4.8-1
>    Version table:
>   *** 0.4.8-1 100
>          100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

That confirms (as I suppose was presumable) that there are no sources
for *any* version of brscan4 in any configured repository.

> comp@AbNormal:~$ apt-cache rdepends
> E: No packages found

Did you leave off the package name from this command?

> Suggestions?

I think we still don't have enough information to be sure of what's
going on, but...

Do you still have the .deb for brscan4 0.4.8-1 around?

If so, you could try any or all of:

* Reinstall it with 'dpkg -i /path/to/brscan4_0.4.8-1.deb'. That should
trigger the package to be configured automatically, and with that
configuration complete, apt should theoretically no longer think that it
needs to do anything with this package and therefore no longer see any
need to download it.

* Copy that .deb into /var/cache/apt/archives/ (if it's not already
there), so that apt might notice that it doesn't need to download it
because there's already a local copy. (This might need some other
command to be run in between, but I couldn't say what just offhand.)

* Uninstall brscan4, run the upgrade, then install it again via the same
reinstall command as suggested above. That both would let you proceed
with whatever other package upgrades there might be, and should resolve
the half-configured status.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.         -- George Bernard Shaw

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