Removing broken packages in Ubuntu

Question

There was an error when I tried to remove a package, so it was left in a broken state. I tried the following:

sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq rvm

Output:

(Reading database ... 41743 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing rvm (1.29.3-1) ...
bash: rvm: command not found
dpkg: error processing package rvm (--purge):
 subprocess installed pre-removal script returned error exit status 127
Errors were encountered while processing:
 rvm

.

sudo dpkg --purge rvm

Output: same as above

sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite package

Output:

dpkg: error processing archive rvm (--install):
 cannot access archive: No such file or directory
Errors were encountered while processing:
 rvm

Is there a way to force remove it, ignoring all errors? I'm using Ubuntu 16.04 on WSL.

Answer 1

I faced this problem with a broken package, rvm. I tried many things like sudo apt install -f and sudo dpkg --purge --force-all rvm but nothing worked. Finally I managed to find this blog post that explains how to remove broken packages on Debian/Ubuntu.

Here are the steps.

1. Find your package in /var/lib/dpkg/info, for example using: ls -l /var/lib/dpkg/info | grep <package>

2. Move the package folder to another location, like suggested in the blog post I mentioned before.

   sudo mv /var/lib/dpkg/info/<package>.* /tmp/
   

3. Run the following command:

   sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq <package>
   

So as an example I solved my problem by executing the following commands in a terminal:

sudo mv /var/lib/dpkg/info/rvm.* /tmp/
sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq rvm

Answer 2

Execute the command as a root

sudo apt-get install -f

You need elevated privileges for the package manager.