Hi!
First, I'm sorry for such a vague and undescriptive title – I'm not sure how to concisely describe this problem in just the handful of words that a title demands. I considered using "I dug a hole and can't get out", but that would be even less descriptive than the current one. This is probably because of a whole lot of errors and mistakes on my part over a long period of time, that has now accumulated. I'll give as much info as I can, and please let me know if I must provide anything more.
I am on Ubuntu 18.04.
Anyway:
In my quest to be able to
access my phone's files through Nautilus, I installed some MTP stuff, without success. One of the answers I found suggested I reinstall Nautilus. Well, I tried, but after a succesful uninstall, I'm unable to install it again.
Code:
$ sudo apt install nautilus
[sudo] password for androidnoob:
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:
nautilus : Depends: libnautilus-extension1a (= 1:3.26.3-0ubuntu4) but 1:3.26.4-0~ubuntu18.04.4 is to be installed
Depends: nautilus-data (= 1:3.26.3-0ubuntu4) but 1:3.26.4-0~ubuntu18.04.4 is to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
By googling this error message, I tried
Code:
dpkg --get-selections | grep hold
, as per
this answer, but it doesn't return anything. So according to that guy, it must be "something else". From the same page, I also tried
sudo apt-get autoremove, also with no luck. I have also, of course, tried
sudo apt update and
sudo apt upgrade numerous time without any success.
Then I tried to install a different file manager, namely Dolphin:
Code:
$ sudo apt install dolphin
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package dolphin
Googling this gave me some repositories to add, but whenever I try to add these repositories, or even if I write an unknown command into bash (such as
$ djkfkjdfkdsf), I get a lot of Python(?!) error messages, different traces depending on the command I try to run, but ultimately always ending up in:
Code:
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'apt_pkg'
Googling this error have taken me on quite an adventure. I've spent a lot of time in
/usr/lib/python3/dist_packages, trying to create symlinks as suggested by dozens of answers online (many of which refer to
this post). I think part of my problem here, is that I don't even have that .so file we're creating a symlink to, so all my links are dead. I've tried installing, removing, reinstalling, ... all the suggestions I've found googling this, even searched manually for the correct .so file, but with no luck.
I've had a lot of problems with apt repos earlier, and with installing Python 3.8 (which I've now uninstalled again), so there might be some old dirt lying in the background here from my presumably poor patches. I don't know. I'm really most of all tempted to just backup my home folder to an external drive (which is going to be another adventure without a file manager...), and install a fresh OS.
Does anyone here have any suggestions as to what to try next?
I feel like I have googled all the error messages, and gotten absolutely nowhere. Right now this Python error with apt_pkg.so is a big roadblock, I feel.
Words of consolation are also welcome.
If you got all the way here to the end, thank you so much for reading, and thank you in advance for your suggestions!