Unable to remove package with unmet dependencies

Asked by JDelgado0311

I attempted to install KDE Plasma on Ubuntu but it failed reporting an error containing the following:

... package kaccounts-providers (not installed) failed to install/upgrade: trying to overwrite '/etc/signon-ui/webkit-options.d/www.facebook.com.conf', which is also in package account-plugin-facebook 0.12+16.04.20160126-0ubuntu1 ...

Turns out that this is a known bug ( #1573787 reported by Robert M on 2016-04-22).

In the error message it suggests running

-Dell-System-XPS-15Z:~$ sudo apt-get -f install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  linux-headers-4.4.0-21 linux-headers-4.4.0-21-generic
  linux-image-4.4.0-21-generic linux-image-extra-4.4.0-21-generic
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following additional packages will be installed:
  kde-config-telepathy-accounts
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  kde-config-telepathy-accounts
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0 B/137 kB of archives.
After this operation, 825 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
(Reading database ... 321971 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../kde-config-telepathy-accounts_4%3a15.12.3-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking kde-config-telepathy-accounts (4:15.12.3-0ubuntu1) ...
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/kde-config-telepathy-accounts_4%3a15.12.3-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 trying to overwrite '/usr/share/accounts/services/google-im.service', which is also in package account-plugin-google 0.12+16.04.20160126-0ubuntu1
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.23-0ubuntu3) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/kde-config-telepathy-accounts_4%3a15.12.3-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I now just want to remove KDE Plasma without breaking the rest of the system. I've read that I can use

sudo dpkg --remove package --force-all. But, I'm afraid I'll break soemthing and make things worse.

I would appreciate any advise on on backing out this failed installation.

Revision history for this message
Best Mark Rijckenberg (markrijckenberg) said :
#1

Please try these Terminal commands:

sudo dpkg -r unity-scope-gdrive

sudo dpkg -r account-plugin-google

sudo apt-get purge kde-telepathy*

sudo apt-get -f install

Source: https://bugs.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/+bug/1451728/comments/89

Revision history for this message
JDelgado0311 (jdelgado0311) said :
#2

Thanks Mark Rijckenberg, that solved my question.