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I was trying to install some 32bit libraries with dpkg -i --force-architecture command. But it failed due to dependency problem.

Now if I try to install 64 bit version of the same library, it says it is already installed. If I try to remove it it says its not installed.

dpkg-query -l shows that the status is rU for the package.

I tried dpkg-configure -a, dpkg--reconfigure, apt-get install -f, apt-get clean, apt-get autoclean and basically every possible Google search.

How can I get out of this stuck package installation?

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Does sudo dpkg --configure -a say anything? What's the full name of the package? –  arrange Aug 30 '11 at 17:11
No, it doesn't say anything. libgtk1.2 is the full name of the package. –  Animesh Aug 30 '11 at 17:30
Can you post the full output of sudo dpkg -r libgtk1.2? –  arrange Aug 30 '11 at 17:35
dpkg: warning: there's no installed package matching libgtk1.2 Processing triggers for python-central ... –  Animesh Aug 30 '11 at 17:46
And the output of the attempt to install the 64bit version? And do you have any related files in /var/lib/dpkg/info/? (ls -l /var/lib/dpkg/info/libgtk*) –  arrange Aug 30 '11 at 17:55

1 Answer 1

up vote 1 down vote accepted

Multi-arch packages should be suffixed with :arch where arch is i386 or amd64. Try the i386 version of libgtk1.2 by explicitly naming it:

sudo apt-get purge libgtk1.2:i386

If this fails due to dependency issues, try adding the -f option.

Where did you get these libraries from? The current GTK+ library is at 2.24-4 for Natty (libgtk2.0-0). libgtk1.2 can be found in Hardy and Dapper according to packages.ubuntu.com.

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The output is: E: Unable to locate package libgtk1.2:i386 E: Couldn't find any package by regex 'libgtk1.2' I installed it from packages.Ubuntu.com as needed by Unreal tournament 2004 game. –  Animesh Aug 31 '11 at 1:51
This one worked: sudo dpkg -r libgtk1.2:i386 –  Animesh Aug 31 '11 at 1:55

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