I am about to have a stroke. Saving the emotional respose that involves more explicatives than I'm willing to admit, here is what is going on:


$ sudo apt-get install -f
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... failed.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libhtml-parser-perl: Depends: perlapi-5.10.0 but it is not installable
libperl5.10: Depends: perl-base (= 5.10.0-13) but 5.8.8-12 is installed
perl: Depends: perl-base (= 5.10.0-13) but 5.8.8-12 is installed
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.
E: Unable to correct dependencies


From what I've read, broken packages behave in unique ways so what works to fix one may not work for another. In any event, has anyone had any experience with this? Thanks again.

If I recall correctly, 'sudo -i' might help maintain your sanity (it should act as if you logged into a root shell; just 'exit' to give up your superpowers).

Did you mix branches? (Etch + Lenny or something like that?)

"perlapi-5.10.0" might be "provided" by a package but is not an actual package, just as "editor" can be provided by vi, pico, emacs etc - the result being that 'apt' has no idea what to do if something depends on "editor" but there isn't actually an editor installed at the time. It looks like the key is to install "perl-base (= 5.10.0-13)"

apt-cache show perl-base|grep Provides

Provides: libscalar-list-utils-perl, libxsloader-perl, perl5-base, perlapi-5.10.0

I probably have made matters worse now:




sudo -i
[sudo] password for sinjin:
Ramius ~ # apt-get install -f
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... failed.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libhtml-parser-perl: Depends: perlapi-5.10.0 but it is not installable
libperl5.10: Depends: perl-base (= 5.10.0-13) but 5.8.8-12 is installed
perl: Depends: perl-base (= 5.10.0-13) but 5.8.8-12 is installed
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.
E: Unable to correct dependencies
Ramius ~ # apt-cache show perl-base|grep
Usage: grep [OPTION]... PATTERN [FILE]...
Try `grep --help' for more information.
Ramius ~ # apt-cache show perl-base|grep Provides
Provides: perl5-base, perlapi-5.8.0, perlapi-5.8.1, perlapi-5.8.2, perlapi-5.8.3, perlapi-5.8.4, perlapi-5.8.6, perlapi-5.8.7, perlapi-5.8.8, libscalar-list-utils-perl
Ramius ~ # apt-get install perl
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
perl is already the newest version.
You might want to run `apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libhtml-parser-perl: Depends: perlapi-5.10.0 but it is not installable
libperl5.10: Depends: perl-base (= 5.10.0-13) but 5.8.8-12 is to be installed
perl: Depends: perl-base (= 5.10.0-13) but 5.8.8-12 is to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).
Ramius ~ #



Apparrently, there are required packages that are not installable. That's just fantastic.


In any event, thank you very much for the quick reply.