Lost Power During apt-get install, Can't Resolve Missing Dependencies

Question

I tried to install mercurial today, and the power went out. Now, when I try to install any packages, it complains about a couple of different things:

>$ sudo apt-get install mercurial 
[sudo] password: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
mercurial is already the newest version.
You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
hunspell-en-us : Conflicts: 
openoffice.org-core (<= ) but 1:3.2.1-7ubuntu1.1 is to be installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' 
with no packages (or specify a solution).
>$ hg
The program 'hg' is currently not installed.  You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install mercurial
>$ sudo apt-get -f install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  hunspell-en-us
Suggested packages:
  hunspell
The following packages will be upgraded:
  hunspell-en-us
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 33 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/249kB of archives.
After this operation, 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Dialog
debconf: falling back to frontend: Readline
warning, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 10469 package 'hunspell-en-us':
 `Conflicts' field, reference to `openoffice.org-core':
 `<' is obsolete, use `<=' or `<<' instead
warning, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 10469 package 'hunspell-en-us':
 `Conflicts' field, reference to `openoffice.org-core':
 version value starts with non-alphanumeric, suggest adding a space
dpkg: parse error, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' 
near line 10469 package 'hunspell-en-us':
 `Conflicts' field, reference to `openoffice.org-core': version contains ` '
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)
$ sudo dpkg --purge hunspell-en-us
warning, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 10469 package 'hunspell-en-us':
 `Conflicts' field, reference to `openoffice.org-core':
 `<' is obsolete, use `<=' or `<<' instead
warning, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 10469 package 'hunspell-en-us':
 `Conflicts' field, reference to `openoffice.org-core':
 version value starts with non-alphanumeric, suggest adding a space
dpkg: parse error, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 10469 package 'hunspell-en-us':
 `Conflicts' field, reference to `openoffice.org-core': version contains ` '

I wish I could give you more hints...I tried going into synaptic and filtering by my broken packages...hunspell-en-us does come back as broken...all options fail in almost identical ways to what's posted above.

I'd appreciate any help with this. I'm worried I may have to purge/uninstall/reinstall openoffice.org-core, but that's a little bit too crazy to do before consulting everyone here.

I tried purging too:

>$ sudo apt-get purge
[sudo] password for droogans: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 hunspell-en-us : Conflicts: openoffice.org-core (<= ) but 1:3.2.1-7ubuntu1.1 is installed
E: Unmet dependencies. Try using -f.
>$ sudo apt-get purge -f

This last command didn't do anything different as well. Think it's time to uninstall openoffice, and the 15+ packages that are going down with it?

UPDATE

I decided to try and dig myself out of a hole by selecting "Completely Remove" from synaptic for openoffice.org-core, and allowing it to also take its dependents with it. I was going to reinstall + update each package afterwards, but it still won't let me go through with it. Same error message as before, and now I'm wondering what other options I have.

Everything works fine on my computer...except getting new, updating existing, repairing or removing packages on my machine.

RESOLVED

After running sudo dpkg-reconfigure -a I got this last line, which was a new one:

/usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: acpi-support is not installed

Which, after a quick search, turned up this solution:

$> cd /var/lib/dpkg
$> sudo cp status-old status
$> sudo cp available-old available
$> sudo apt-get install -f

That cleared it up. I had to go into synaptic to get a genuine reinstall, but afterwards, it worked.

Finally. Thanks everyone.

Answer 1

A dpkg-reconfigure -a helped me out of crashed updates many times. Opposed to dpkg --configure -a it even tries to configure packages again which already had been started to be configured.

Answer 2

sudo apt-get -f install Should fix your problem.

Answer 3

I'll add a "desperation answer" since you seem urgent to fix it. You might have tried some of these things already.

• Try using aptitude instead of apg-get. It at least used to be more intelligent than apt-get when it came to conflict resolution, and perhaps it handles this situation differently (though nowadays there isn't much difference between the two, I've heard).
• Try sudo aptitude purge hunspell-en-us, or even sudo aptitude purge openoffice.org-core and later reinstall them.
• Download the hunspell-en-us package from debian.org (or from Ubuntu, you haven't said which distribution you are using) and try to install it directly with dpkg.
• (Safety goggles on for this one:) Try to move the /var/lib/dpkg/status somewhere else and see if that will make it attempt to be rebuilt when using APT. Move it back if it just makes things worse.

Answer 4

sudo dpkg --configure -a should repair your dpkg database. Then update and try installing packages