I've broken apt-get -f install? (fixed)

**knewbix** · 05-23-2005, 05:02 AM

Hiya. Only 2 months new to Knoppix and rather unconfident in general but I'm slowly learning. It all started when I was trying to install mplayer so I can watch streaming wmv stuff. A guy on another board said I need mplayer and alsa so I set about getting them but it didn't work. I tried using apt-get and by manually downloading .deb files and all sorts of stuff which I probably should have learnt up on a bit before attempting

Now when I run "apt-get -f install" (which has helped me in the past) I get:

Code:

# apt-get -f install
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  alsa-utils

Suggested packages:
  alsadriver
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  alsa-utils
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 665 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/146kB of archives.
After unpacking 422kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 115568 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking alsa-utils (from .../alsa-utils_1.0.8-4_i386.deb) ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/alsa-utils_1.0.8-4_i386.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite `/usr/bin/alsamixer', which is also in package knx-alsa
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/alsa-utils_1.0.8-4_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Basically I am not interested enough to keep trying to install mplayer or any alsa stuff which isn't needed, I can live without it and the general learning curve of Linux is such that I'd rather concentrate on more important issues but I'd suspect the above is not exactly a desirable way to have my system. By all means if you can suggest things to try out, please do, but I'm also wondering what the general course of action that I'm supposed to take is? Should I be trying to uninstall knx-alsa or am I completely off-track? And that Broken Pipe thing doesn't sound too promising. If you suggest any codes, it would be fantastic if you could tell me what they're actually doing, but I'm not fussy.

Oh well, thanks for any help.

**Markus** · 05-23-2005, 08:52 AM

I haven't used apt-get with knoppix in a while but the usual way to fix these things is:
sudo dpkg -i --force-all /var/cache/apt/archives/alsa-utils_1.0.8-4_i386.deb
and after that:
sudo dpkg --configure -a

**knewbix** · 05-23-2005, 10:36 AM

Markus, I wish I could thank you enough - It worked perfectly. Can't believe it was so simple. I hope you have a fantastic day, oh what the heck, I hope you have a fantastic year!