Kubuntu18.04 stopped booting to GUI after installing a package. Only black screen

[Dr Diamante]

Hi all,

I installed Kubuntu 18.04 a few hours ago and everything was running smoothly until i insatlled the zlib1g package due to a software that renders 3d geometry. Now Linux doesn't boot anymore but i can boot in recovery mode. I tried
>sudo apt-get install --fix-broken

and i got this error:

Reading packages lists…Done
Correcting dependencies…Done
The following additional packages will be installed;
zlib1g zlib1g:i386
The following packages will be upgraded:
zlib1g zlib1g:i386
2 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 178 not to upgrade.
2 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 115 KB of archives.
After this operation, 30.7 KB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y

Err:1 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/main amd64 zlib1g amd64 1:1.2.11.dgsg-Oubuntu2
Temporary failure resolving ‘gb.archive.ubuntu.com’
Err2: http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic/main i386 zlib1g i386 1:1.2.11.dgsg-Oubuntu2
Temporary failure resolving ‘gb.archive.ubuntu.com’
E: Failed to fetch http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/...ntu2_amd64.deb Temporary failure
E: Failed to fetch http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/...untu2_i386.deb Temporary failure
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with—fix-missing?

Also tried the
>sudo apt-get update

and the same error where Linux couldn't fetch from the http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com.ubuntu/...onic/InRelease

I checked the website myself and the link doesn't exist in fact.

Does someone have an idea why the files are not available in the above website? Or at least what to do to have Linux booting again?

I also noticed that even though i'm working on a machine with 64gb ram, alocatted a 70gb swap partition an 30gb to install Linux, the 30gb partition gets filled very quickly. Almost like 1gb is taken every 10secs, this happens intermittently though.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[GreyGeek]

The two commands to run in a situation like this are:
sudo apt -f install
sudo dpkg --configure -a

Repeat them several times until the problem clears, or the same msgs are repeated. If the former, the problems are solved. If the later, you will probably have to try to uninstall the 3D stuff and repeat those two commands to clean up your system.

[jlittle]

Temporary failure resolving ‘gb.archive.ubuntu.com’

That looks like a "Temporary failure", because it loads for me now. Weird to see "gb", TLD .gb is not used, but it appears to me to be linked to "uk".

When I hit errors like this, I use system->muon package manager->settings->configure software sources (if you don't have muon, try /etc/alternatives/kdesu software-properties-kde in a konsole) to change "Download from:" to "Main server". (Sometime later I change it back, and if there's still problems I might start trying to contact the mirror's admins to get it sorted. I can recall twice in 12 years or so.)

[Dr Diamante]

Once again, thank you so much for the help @GreyGeek and @jlittle. I'm very new to Linux but the more i use it the more it makes sense to keep using it. Such a nice OS these days...

So, i could resolve the problem by taking a more drastic route.

Sadly but for the good, i re-started from scratch. I formatted the main partition, increased the swap drive from 70gb to 80gb and used a 25gb partition to install Kubuntu 18.04. After that, i re-installed Houdini (3D Software) and then the render software (Redshift). All went well until i tried to run the Redshift licensing tool, this tool was the beggining of all the problem posted in the beggining of this post. It looks like this licensing tool needs a package to work that is called libpng12-0. After checking some forums, i found the page to download it manually which is: https://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/a...g12-0/download

Once i downloaded the package, i installed it and then finally could run the licensing tool for Redshift. Now, everything is working. The system freezes once in a while when i start jumping from app to app but that is a subject for another post.

Thank you so much, i'm learning a lot with your posts. Will keep researching more. Best regards.