Apt-get error when upgrading mysql from running out of room

Question

I ran out of room on my drive on an ec2 instance and it mounted the overflow /tmp space. I noticed this when I did an apt-get update/upgrade and the upgrade failed because it had no more room on tmp. I fixed the space issue now when I try and upgrade again I get:

You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these. The following packages have unmet dependencies: mysql-server-5.5 : Depends: mysql-server-core-5.5 (= 5.5.29-0ubuntu0.12.04.1) but 5.5.29-0ubuntu0.12.04.2 is installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try using -f.

So I tried apt-get -f install and get this error:

dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mysql-server-5.5: mysql-server-5.5 depends on mysql-server-core-5.5 (= 5.5.29-0ubuntu0.12.04.1); however: Version of mysql-server-core-5.5 on system is 5.5.29-0ubuntu0.12.04.2. dpkg: error processing mysql-server-5.5 (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure. dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mysql-server: mysql-server depends on mysql-server-5.5; however: Package mysql-server-5.5 is not configured yet. dpkg: error processing mysql-server (--configure): dependency problems - leaving unconfigured No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure. Errors were encountered while processing: mysql-server-5.5 mysql-server E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I tried to use apt-get clean but it did not work. I am hoping there is an easier fix than try to remove/purge mysql because I have databases I use every day.

Thanks for the help

Answer 1

It seems you're stuck because of a too new version of mysql-server-core-5.5 (5.5.29-0ubuntu0.12.04.2 vs. 5.5.29-0ubuntu0.12.04.1) for your mysql-server-5.5 package.

Try to install the latest mysql-server-5.5 package:

apt-get update && apt-get install mysql-server-5.5

If this won't work, it's also safe to remove the mysql-server package via

apt-get remove mysql-server-5.5 

and installing it again. As long as you don't use the purge option, your databases won't get deleted. If apt-get is trying to remove too many dependencies as well, there's also the way to remove the package directly via dpkg without dependencies:

dpkg -r --force-depends mysql-server-5.5

If you are still afraid of losing your databases, just backup them somewhere before, e.g.

 cp -arv /var/lib/mysql /root