Member Avatar for khakilang

Recently I received corrupted file or broken dependencies when using update manager on my Ubuntu 9.04. Could it be due to my aging notebook that the hard disk has bad sector or is it that the file already corrupt in the repositories. Trying to reinstall doesn't work either.

Appreciate anyone who can help.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by sknake

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Short summary: reported broken dependencies and an Adobe Flash plugin failure on Ubuntu 9.04; the thread shows the problem cleared after suggested cleaning the package cache and refreshing packages. That symptom pattern—an install failing with parse/truncation errors and then succeeding after the cache is cleared—most often means a corrupted .deb in the local package cache or a transient mirror/network problem, not necessarily a dying disk. Hardware faults remain possible, so a few quick checks are worth doing.

Checks to run (logs and disk health):

smartctl -H -a /dev/sda
dmesg | grep -i 'I/O error'
df -h
tail -n 200 /var/log/dpkg.log

If SMART shows failing attributes or dmesg reports repeated I/O errors, treat hardware as suspect and back up data immediately. If logs show package/parse errors without I/O problems, the cached package was likely truncated.

Practical recovery steps and cautions:

  • Inspect the package cache for a zero-length or obviously damaged .deb for the Flash package and remove that file so the package manager will fetch a fresh copy.
  • Reconfigure any half-installed packages with dpkg and, if necessary, install a freshly downloaded .deb.
  • If filesystem corruption is suspected, run a filesystem check (e2fsck) from a live USB/session; never run it on a mounted root partition.

Longer-term notes: Ubuntu 9.04 is long past end-of-life, so repositories and mirrors may be moved and package availability can be unreliable—upgrading to a supported release is strongly recommended. If the thread’s fix was the cache-clean/refresh approach, the most likely root cause was a corrupted download rather than immediate disk failure, but persistent I/O errors or SMART failures mean replacement and a restore from backup.

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Member Avatar for sknake

Can you post the error messages you are receiving? It might be a parsing error versus disk corruption issue. We need more information.

Member Avatar for khakilang

I try to upload the screen shot of the error. I hope I did that right.


It actually Adobe flash plugin. It keep on giving error and the synaptic manager show broken dependencies and i can see youtube.

Appreciate if anyone can help. Linux newbie

Edited by khakilang because: n/a
Member Avatar for khakilang

This is another one from the update manager.


Appreciate anyone who can help. Linux newbie.

Member Avatar for sknake

Try running: apt-get -f check

Edited by sknake because: n/a
Member Avatar for khakilang

I did this on my terminal. Hope I did it right.


Is there anything else I should do? Did I miss out something?

Appreciate to anyone who can help.

Member Avatar for sknake

Run apt-get clean then apt-get update .. then run the check again

Member Avatar for khakilang

I think I got it. Thanks.

Member Avatar for sknake

You're welcome

Please mark this thread if you have found the answer to your original question and good luck!

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