Still stuck and cannot upgrade

[doctordruidphd]

Almost worked, but that's like almost surviving the operation...

Here is what I did: I erased the upgrade system, copied over my 17.10, and apt-get delete --purge the offending 6 packages. One of them didn't exist, and removing qdbus-qt5 also removed a good chunk of KDE along with it. Then ran the do-release-upgrade -d , which ran but warned of errors. When it completed, I ran the apt-get install -f and dpkg --configure -a duo, but they found no problems. Then I tried to install kubuntu-desktop. That went fine until it tried to install qdbus-qt5, and we are back to the same problem:

root@Crynfyd:/# dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/qdbus-qt5_5.9.5-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
(Reading database ... 839516 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../qdbus-qt5_5.9.5-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking qdbus-qt5 (5.9.5-0ubuntu1) ...
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/qdbus-qt5_5.9.5-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb (--install):
unable to open '/usr/lib/qt5/bin/qdbus.dpkg-new': No such file or directory
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/qdbus-qt5_5.9.5-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb

Just as before, touching the relevant file did not help; the script just erases it before it looks for it.
I can't find any options for apt or dpkg that will override this.

This has got to be a package problem.

I did not try installing the rest of qtcreator; no point really.
It is firmly stuck at this point, though the rest of the system seems to have upgraded as expected. It is bootable, but no plasma.

PS: what is this silly keyboard thing that comes up with the login screen? This is a computer, not a cell phone. How do I make this go away? Also it looks like the gui is on CTRL-ALT-F1 and not CTRL-ALT-F7, is that right?

[GreyGeek]

You should have purged plasma-desktop, not just 6 packages. Then reboot and redo "sudo auto update" to get the msg to autoremove uneeded packages, which you should do. THEN install plasma-desktop.

If that doesn't work then I'd just DL the 18.04 ISO and to a fresh install. Forget 17.10. It will be EOL this summer anyway.

[jlittle]

Yes, apt-get install -f, dpkg --configure -a, apt --fix-broken install, pretty much everything like that I can think of.

Aptitude? I wonder it it still works. Twice for me it has worked when all else failed, though you might have thoroughly borked the install by now.

[doctordruidphd]

Every time I have tried to use Aptitude, it does serious damage to the system, or at least threatens to. I don't think it's maintained anymore.

Where does one go to report or inquire about whether there might be a problem with the install script for a package? I'm not about to undertake the sheer hell of a "fresh install" if this boils down to a simple problem in a script that could be easily fixed, at least not without a clear explanation of why it doesn't work. I just can't trash that much of my time right now.

Further FYI: I just tried an install --reinstall qdbus-qt5 on the 17.10 I am trying to upgrade, and it did it with no problem. So I don't think the system itself is broken; something wrong somewhere in the upgrade process.