I have the following libc6 dependency problem in Debian 9.12 stretch.
sudo apt install libc6-dev
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
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.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libc6-dev : Depends: libc6 (= 2.24-11+deb9u4) but 2.27-6 is to be installed
Depends: libc-dev-bin (= 2.24-11+deb9u4) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
How can I fix it?
EDIT1:
apt policy libc6
libc6:
Installed: 2.27-6
Candidate: 2.27-6
Version table:
*** 2.27-6 100
100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
2.24-11+deb9u4 500
500 http://deb.debian.org/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages
2.24-11+deb9u1 500
500 http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates/main amd64 Packages
EDIT2:
apt install libc6/stretch libc6-dev/stretch libc-dev-bin/stretch
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Selected version '2.24-11+deb9u4' (Debian:9.12/oldstable [amd64]) for 'libc6'
Selected version '2.24-11+deb9u4' (Debian:9.12/oldstable [amd64]) for 'libc6-dev'
Selected version '2.24-11+deb9u4' (Debian:9.12/oldstable [amd64]) for 'libc-dev-bin'
The following additional packages will be installed:
linux-libc-dev
Suggested packages:
glibc-doc locales
The following packages will be REMOVED:
libc-bin locales sudo
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libc-dev-bin libc6-dev linux-libc-dev
The following packages will be DOWNGRADED:
libc6
WARNING: The following essential packages will be removed.
This should NOT be done unless you know exactly what you are doing!
libc-bin
0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 1 downgraded, 3 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 6,797 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1,437 kB disk space will be freed.
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To continue type in the phrase 'Yes, do as I say!'
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Best Answer
You configured your system to use packages from several distributions at once (a so-called Frankenstein-Debian), so dependency errors are normal. Run
cat /etc/apt/sources.list{,.d/*.list}
in bash to list all sources.Your libc6 (version
2.27-6
) is stuck somewhere between stretch (version2.24-11+deb9u4
) and buster (version2.28-10
). My guess is you pulled some packages from buster, while it was still the testing distribution. The easiest way to solve this problem is:Find in your APT sources a reference to testing or buster. If you find something like:
replace it with:
since buster isn't the testing distribution any more (bullseye is).
Update the list of packages:
Upgrade your libc6 to the version from buster:
Consider upgrading to Debian 10 in the near future to have all packages from the same distribution.
Edit: It seems you have few packages with a version higher than Stretch, so you can just downgrade them:
and remove buster and company from APT sources.