ubuntu-desktop package is not installing
 

Hello guys,

I am using ubuntu for a month. Yesterday i tried to upgrade it from 9.10 to 10.0. Then i had to shut down the pc for electricity failure. After that ubuntu came into halt in boot time and something like recovery shell came. It advised me to use "fsck" and i did that. All were again fine (Except some icon goes from left to right ). Then today i was trying to install "Virtuabox" and it says i need to remove "devicekit-power" package. i did it with synaptic package manager ( with my newbie wisdom , didn't knew it would crample my system ). Then the Empathy gone, shut down button gone ). I then installed some lost package

- gnome power manager
- indicator session
- indicator applet session

but ubuntu-desktop package is not installing. Whenever i try it says to fix broken package and i tried the option in synaptic, but no luck. also tried in recovery mode to fix broken package but it says the same.
now i got the empathy and the green sign back ( after installing those 3 package ) but not like it was ( they are now separated , and uglier ). Same problem installing devicekit-power package. it says it is not in repository.
1. Did the 10.0 failure upgrade was behind this thing?
2. Any help installing Virtuabox? it first installs fine ( downloaded deb package ). then it tries to download some extra packages and always fails to download them. tried in command shell as instructed in its website and also treid in ubuntu soft centre but no luck.
3. Is there any way i can install the missing ubuntu-desktop and devicekit thing?
4. Would be very glad if someone tell me about a linux soft that protect my system from my wild exploration and destruction :D

When it tells you to uninstall something, you are usually in trouble.

I would rot 'sudo rpm --rebuilddb' and then reinstall devicekit-manager. See how it goes

Thanks for the reply, but i was unable to do as you instructed.

Well i tried to install VirtualBox again from ubuntu soft centre ( I didn't check the reply mail - i wish i would ). This time it gave no alert or anything. Suddenly a reboot.After the reboot it displays something about pulse audio in red coloured font. then there is no desktop environment, but a command shell ask me to login. i logged in with my best newbie effort. Then there was nothing but saif-desktop:$ thing. No desktop environment.I tried several times rebooting the computer ( i enjoyed that reboot command ).Then i knew that was my limit. So i installed ubuntu again ( oh my precious bookmarks )...

thanks for the reply though. i am , i mean, too much weak to fix this things. Better to learn a lesson and not do this things again :D

But i felt, as a retired m$ user, windows has a thing called recover windows, where the operating system fix itself completely. i didn't find anything in ubuntu like this. Is there any soft like that to fix up ubuntu ? i mean, that kind of soft is dead necessary for newbie scientists like me.....

Linux is written for programmers who all know exactly what's going on; so they never bother to tell us :-/. No restore points are needed - they would be a huge waste of space. Of course everyone backs up. . .
What goes wrong when you open a terminal and type

sudo rpm --rebuilddb

Rpm won't help here, Ubuntu works the packages with apt. About the only time Ubuntu asks you to remove packages is when a bigger upgrade (e.g. to a completely new version) is going, and some software has been decided to be removed from the way of something else. This was the case when upgrading from 9.10 to 10.04, for example. Ubuntu is not a "geek" or "programmer operating system" no more than anything else, nor is the majority of other Linux distributions. It just feels so, if you've accustomed to some other operating system (say Windows) and only learning the new one. Same applies the other way around; if you had never seen Windows before and people started telling you about using Windows Scripting Host or PowerShell to do some fancy things, or run mysterious commands in the "Run..." dialog to bring up "hidden tools" or just mine through some cryptic registry keys, you'd probably feel lost.

If it was certain people had infinite amount of space, and also infinitely powerful systems, the operating system could of course take a full image of the harddisk ten times a day and put it back if you ever ran into trouble. But as it is, there's always limits on machine power and storage, and so it's not going to work (taking a full image would take time, probably require you to stop working for some of the time, and consume lots of space). I've come to use the Windows "recover" thingy a couple of times, and never it has been quite the same despite of what it adverts. Always some programs have had to be reinstalled anyway, and twice the whole system, because mysterious problems never disappeared. Could the the ordinary day too, though.

You can try to work as guided (I'd first clean apt's cache just to make sure the packages you download are not crippled), using the "fix option" of apt, or dpkg's reconfigure. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. In a bad case a package may get installed that has broken scripts in it, and it's left "halfway there". In these cases you may have to manually do some work to force removing it, for example, but it depends. I think almost if not every time I've had apt messed up (usually because a package is halfway installed or removed, but not completely, and apt is persistent to finish the job), somebody has already experienced the same situation and good instructions for the fix along with explanations are found on the web.

Best way to secure your back is to have backups, no matter what operating system you use. Second best, on Linux, is to not run commands that require root privileges (such as package managers) without finding out what exactly you're doing. Removing things means removing, not "sending to recycle bin", so when you face that situation, double check. Whenever you can, replace "removing" with "moving" or "renaming", so you can get back if needed -- backups are just that, a path back.

After you login and are presented with a terminal prompt (saif-desktop:$)
try running: gdmsetup. This should hopefully allow you to configure a gdm login.
Then try running: sudo service gdm start, and see if you get the graphical (gdm) login. If that does not work, then try rebooting after running gdmsetup.
Since you are getting erors about pulseaudio, you could also try installing pulseaudio and see if that helps:
The ubuntu-desktop package is just a meta-package that serves to pull in all the packages that are part of a default Ubuntu desktop; but you don't actually need the ubuntu-desktop meta-package to have a functioning desktop.
Your dist-upgrade was likely corrupted when the electrical failure forced you to shutdown in the middle of an upgrade.

Question: Have you ever even used Ubuntu?
If you have, you should at least know that it doesn't use RPM.

I did install ubuntu on this box, but they didn't get on. It went _soo_ slow that it was unreal. I walked away ahd had tea thinking it had crashed while booting, but it actually was just starting. I'm not blaming Ubuntu for this, BTW. Let's not get pickish. The debian package package manager has something similar.

I also installed ubuntu on a 32 bit box, but preferred slackware.

Hello guys! i really loved all of your quick replies - i almost felt like a VIP :D Didn't knew linux experts are so much friendly. But as you see, i have freshly installed ubuntu again so i am sorry.... i cann't apply your advises - i am sure they would work ! Again so much thanks.

Well the idea of backup Ubuntu is looking awesome to me. i gonna try it ! is this post should do the trick ?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=35087

Do you guys think i should backup onec a week ? coz i mess around all the time. I think i am a constant newbie danger to my ubuntu system :D

Sorry guys for disturbing you by asking questions over and over. I am a computer science student but can't even handle ubuntu properly :( What a waste i am.....

The only error that has is that should be Also, once a week will take a lot of hard drive space.