Package needs re-installation, but package cannot be found
 

I tried to install jEdit from their deb-package on edubuntu (Ubuntu), but an error occured during the installation. Now I can't run updates or anything, because this broken package is blocking it all.

How can I possibly remove it?


//My system is running in danish see translation below
E: Pakken jedit skal geninstalleres, men jeg kan ikke finde noget arkiv med den.
E: Internal error opening cache (1). Please report.

//International
E: The package jedit needs to be re-installed, but I can't find any archive with it
E: Internal error opening cache (1). Please report.

Is there anyone who can get me out of this mess?

http://images.linuxquestions.org/que...ies/newbie.gif

Use dpkg --get-selections | grep -i jedit to find the right package. Then you can try dpkg -P jedit (I'm guessing at the package name). This should purge the package using dpkg.

I'm afraid not:

dpkg: error during handling jedit (--purge):
Package is in a very poor, inconsistant state - You should re-install it, before You try to uninstall it.
An error occured during handling of:
jedit

Problem solved:

sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq jedit

I don't know exactly how it works, so if someone would spent a minute to explain that would be GREAT.

However I tried it and it fixed my problem.

Reading the man page (i.e. man dpkg basically says you're using the low-level debian package manager, dpkg, to remove a file (but leave the config files) and forcefully remove the package jedit, even though it requires a reinstall. Typically dpkg won't remove a package requiring a reinstall because you might leave parts of the package on the system.

From man dpkgYou can probably clean it up with deborphan if needed.