Recent Updates Broke Applications

Asked by Andrew Gee

Booted up computer this morning.

Updates available.

First I tried to install them all at once, like I usually do. But the first update, libc6 failed with the error:

 A copy of glibc was found in an unexpected directory.
 It is not safe to upgrade the C library in this situation;
 please remove that copy of the C library and try again.
 dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/libc6_2.4-1ubuntu12.2_i386.deb (--unpack):
  subprocess pre-installation script returned error exit status 1
 Errors were encountered while processing:
  /var/cache/apt/archives/libc6_2.4-1ubuntu12.2_i386.deb
 E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

So I unticked the libc6 update in the update manager, which also unticked libc6-i686.

I then went on to install some other updates, which I think were totem updates, there could've been others as well. I can't really remember. But when it was installing these updates, it appeared to be removing loads of packages that aren't related to totem at all. Them all these other updates were installed.

And after the updates, I was left with a system that can't load openoffice. Trying to load openoffice from the command line gives the following:

** (process:9228): WARNING **: Unknown error forking main binary / abnormal early exit ...

Anyone give me a hand in what direction to take?

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Andrew Gee
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Andrew Gee (andrewgee) said :
#1

Ok.... I can't boot up my computer now. Just ends up on a black screen.

Help! :-(

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Andrew Gee (andrewgee) said :
#2

The booting up problem seems to be an xserver problem. Looked through the log file. The error is:

error opening security policy file /usr/lib/xserver/SecurityPolicy

Revision history for this message
Best Andrew Gee (andrewgee) said :
#3

I sorted the problem my self. Uninstalled libpthread20 and then ran dist-upgrade.

Then re compiled the nvidia driver!