Trying to fix broken dependencies (Libre Office)

Solution 1:

I have answered this myself after doing some research and learning some new tricks. I am going to provide the answer in case someone runs into an issue related to these broken dependencies. I used synaptic package manager to remove broken packages. Here is how I did that

First I Downloaded Synaptic Package Manager Synaptic Package Manager

I then moved the downloaded .deb file to my home folder ( for easy terminal access) then proceeded to open terminal

CTRL + ALT + T

I had to install the package via dpkg because apt-get was not working due to broken dependencies

sudo dpkg -i synaptic_0.81.1_amd64.deb

once this was complete I opened up synaptic running the following in terminal

sudo synaptic

Within the Synaptic Package Manager

click on the Status Tab

and then click on Broken and select the packages that are broken. and Mark for Complete Removal and continue to apply the changes.

I also made sure everything was completely removed by using the following in terminal

sudo apt-get autoremove

and double checking the packages in synaptic package manager

there was no left over libre office packages so I continued to install Libre Office through Ubuntu Software Center

Solution 2:

If you have this problem do this:

sudo mkdir /usr/bin/soffice
sudo apt-get -f install -y

Solution 3:

I understand this happened years ago, but I had a similar situation with 18.04 LTS (Bionic). My computer was stuck, not updates, installs...nothing. So......

The only way I solved the problem was by installing the package named libreoffice-common. This is where I found the dpkg error message displaying:

dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/libreoffice-common_1%3a6.0.3-0ubuntu1_all.deb (--unpack): trying to overwrite '/usr/bin/soffice', which is also in package openoffice-debian-menus 4.1.4-9788 rmdir: failed to remove '/var/lib/libreoffice/share/prereg/': No such file or directory rmdir: failed to remove '/var/lib/libreoffice/share/': No such file or directory rmdir: failed to remove '/var/lib/libreoffice/program/': No such file or directory rmdir: failed to remove '/var/lib/libreoffice': No such file or directory rmdir: failed to remove '/var/lib/libreoffice': No such file or directory Errors were encountered while processing: /var/cache/apt/archives/libreoffice-common_1%3a6.0.3-0ubuntu1_all.deb E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)"

I had to carefully read the error message. It was letting me know that another application by the name of openoffice-debian-menus was using the file located in /usr/bin/soffice. This file could not be overwritten for some reason or another.

So I removed the program using dpkg: sudo dpkg -P openoffice-debian-menus 4.1.4-9788

Installed libreoffice-common: sudo apt install libreoffice-common

Ran updates: sudo apt update && sudo apt list --upgradable

After running the previous command, use the following to verify that you want the packages included in the upgrade: sudo apt show pkgs "Package name". If everything looks fine, run sudo apt full-upgrade && sudo apt autoremove.

I hope everything pans out.