[EdLUG] Help with Dropbox, pleaseq

[Edinburgh Linux Users Group]

Andrew (presumably) wrote:
> I want to install dropbox, but this is the result:
>
>  andrew at andrew-Lenovo-G50-30:~/Download/Software$ sudo apt-get install ./dropbox_2015.10.28_amd64.deb

Well, for a start this is the wrong tool for the job.
/usr/bin/apt-get is the older front-end for the APT package management
system; these days assuming you're running a modern release you'd
usually be better off using the newer and friendlier one, just called
/usr/bin/apt.  But APT is for resolving dependency chains and fetching
packages from your configured repositories - what you seem to be
trying to do here is bypass that whole mechanism and manually install
just one particular local package-file.  If you really want to do that
(I don't recommend it), it would be a job for the lower-level tool
/usr/bin/dpkg!  Or at least, it would if you had the right
dependencies either available as local files or already installed.
It's not clear whether you have:

> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree
> Reading state information... Done
> Note, selecting 'dropbox:amd64' instead of './dropbox_2015.10.28_amd64.deb'
> Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
> requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
> distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
> or been moved out of Incoming.

(I hope you aren't using unstable, but it would be really reduce the
amount of guesswork required if you could tell us what OS release you
*are* using.)

> The following information may help to resolve the situation:
> 
> The following packages have unmet dependencies.
>  dropbox:amd64 : Depends: python-gtk2:amd64 (>= 2.12) but it is not installable
>                  Depends: python:amd64 (>= 2.5) but it is not installable
>                  Depends: libatk1.0-0:amd64 (>= 1.20.0) but it is not installable
>                  Depends: libc6:amd64 (>= 2.4) but it is not installable
>                  Depends: libcairo2:amd64 (>= 1.6.0) but it is not installable
>                  Depends: libglib2.0-0:amd64 (>= 2.16.0) but it is not installable
>                  Depends: libgtk2.0-0:amd64 (>= 2.12.0) but it is not installable
>                  Depends: libpango1.0-0:amd64 (>= 1.20.1) but it is not installable
> E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
> andrew at andrew-Lenovo-G50-30:~/Download/Software$

It's not clear why your system would have trouble with these
dependencies - libc6, for instance, is guaranteed to be on your system
already, and version 2.4 came out ten years ago.  Maybe your APT
system is just badly confused and in need of a "sudo apt update" (and
possibly a "sudo apt upgrade")?
 
> Anyone know how I can fix this ?

This might help:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/411809/nautilus-dropbox-depends-dropbox-but-it-is-not-going-to-be-installed/411815
-- 
Justin B Rye
http://jbr.me.uk/