WARNING: dpkg could not install dummy TeX Live package

[sunew]

Ubuntu 14.04

I get WARNING: dpkg could not install dummy TeX Live package when running the script (with the -m option)
(Just tried it without -m : Same problem)

Then I try to run it manually - this is what I get:

root@wlr-laptop:/tmp# dpkg -i tmp.RxjO2Hl7Jg/texlive-local_2014-19_all.deb
dpkg: regarding .../texlive-local_2014-19_all.deb containing texlive-local:
texlive-binaries conflicts with makejvf
texlive-local provides makejvf and is to be installed.

dpkg: error processing archive tmp.RxjO2Hl7Jg/texlive-local_2014-19_all.deb (--install):
conflicting packages - not installing texlive-local
Errors were encountered while processing:
tmp.RxjO2Hl7Jg/texlive-local_2014-19_all.deb

root@wlr-laptop:/tmp# aptitude show makejvf
Package: makejvf
State: not installed
Version: 1.1a+0-2
Priority: optional
Section: universe/tex
Maintainer: Atsuhito KOHDA [email protected]
Architecture: amd64
Uncompressed Size: 94,2 k
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.4-1)
Conflicts: makejvf
Provided by: texlive-binaries
Description: generate VF file from japanese TeX TFM file for dvips

[sunew]

I just tried forcing it - more packages give warnings:

root@wlr-laptop:/tmp# dpkg --force-conflicts -i tmp.RxjO2Hl7Jg/texlive-local_2014-19_all.deb
dpkg: regarding .../texlive-local_2014-19_all.deb containing texlive-local:
texlive-binaries conflicts with makejvf
texlive-local provides makejvf and is to be installed.

dpkg: warning: ignoring conflict, may proceed anyway!
dpkg: regarding .../texlive-local_2014-1~9_all.deb containing texlive-local:
texlive-binaries conflicts with mendexk
texlive-local provides mendexk and is to be installed.

dpkg: warning: ignoring conflict, may proceed anyway!
dpkg: regarding .../texlive-local_2014-1~9_all.deb containing texlive-local:
texlive-base conflicts with texlive-common
texlive-local provides texlive-common and is to be installed.

dpkg: warning: ignoring conflict, may proceed anyway!
dpkg: regarding .../texlive-local_2014-1~9_all.deb containing texlive-local:
texlive-base conflicts with texlive-doc-base
texlive-local provides texlive-doc-base and is to be installed.

dpkg: warning: ignoring conflict, may proceed anyway!
(Reading database ... 624206 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../texlive-local_2014-19_all.deb ...
Unpacking texlive-local (2014-19) ...
Setting up texlive-local (2014-1~9) ...

[scottkosty]

Hi Sune, thank you for the feedback and the extra details. From what I understand, you either have those packages installed or you have packages installed that provide them. However, since those are warnings and not errors, do I understand that your manual installation (with --force-conflicts) worked? I'm wondering if we should use --force-conflicts by default in install-tl-ubuntu. Do you have any thoughts on that? My thought is that there is low risk of messing something up because we will not overwrite anything since all the binaries will be in the /opt/texbin anyway. The only thing is that perhaps the TeX Live versions are newer and /opt/texbin will be earlier on the PATH, and newer versions could bring incompatibilities/regressions.

[buhtz]

I had the same problem on Kubuntu 14.04.03 with an existing CTAN-TexLive installation. Just did sudo apt-get install makejvf. After that the warning was gone and everything was fine.
If --force-conflicts could have solved that problem it should minimaly a part of the WARNING-message.

[rmcrowley2000]

I had this same issue and fixed it, so I'll detail my solution here, since it is different than that of buhtz. I was coming from a previous texlive install that was provided by the Ubuntu repositories, and I wanted to update to texlive 2016. Running the script following the directions lead to the "dpkg could not install dummy TeX Live package" error, though install went along just fine. When trying to install the dummy package manually like sunew, I received the same errors.

Then I noticed that when I removed the old texlive-base package, I hadn't removed texlive-binaries. A quick sudo apt-get autoremove texlive-binaries took care of that, and then the dpkg command worked just fine.

[scottkosty]

Thanks for the new solution @rmcrowley2000 . I wonder if the script should check for packages and exit with error if the packages exist. My guess is that most users would intend to remove them before using install-tl-ubuntu.