Csdrhrt

I'm trying to install linux-libc-dev with apt-get in Windows Subsystem for Linux (ubuntu), but I get an error and I can't seem to resolve it:

dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-libc-dev_3.13.0-126.175_amd64.deb (--unpack):

 unable to install new version of `/usr/include/linux/netfilter/xt_DSCP.h': File exists

Errors were encountered while processing:

 /var/cache/apt/archives/linux-libc-dev_3.13.0-126.175_amd64.deb

E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

But when I list the files in /usr/include/, the linux directory doesn't even exist.

What could be causing this? How can the file exist when the directory does not?

Thanks.

Probably an install was aborted mid way, leaving it broken.

Find borked packages:

dpkg --configure -a

This should return a list like:

Errors were encountered while processing:

libc6-dev:amd64

libstdc++-4.8-dev:amd64

g++-4.8

g++

Force remove these:

dpkg --remove libc6-dev

dpkg --remove g++

...

Clear your cache of any downloaded packages which are invalid, and purge extra packages:

apt-get clean

apt-get autoremove

You should be able to apt-get install foo again now.

As far as I'm aware apt isn't smart enough to fix this itself once it gets into this kind of state, you have to fall back to explicitly purging packages using dpkg --remove.

I had the same problem and found that it is triggered simply because, for some unfortunate and weird reason, the Ubuntu package linux-libc-dev contains a handful of (header) files with names that are distinct only by letter case, e.g., /usr/include/linux/netfilter/xt_DSCP.h and /usr/include/linuxnetfilter/xt_dscp.h.

The issue is due to some silly behavior of the WSL, namely a bug/inconsistency how its case-sensitive file system is implemented. Suppose in some directory there is a file and you want to create in the same directory a further file with a name that is the same except for case. This should work and create the second file in addition to the other one (or maybe overwrite the existing file). Yet this fails and, even worse, produces a misleading error:


touch a.txt
touch A.txt

yields

touch: cannot touch 'A.txt': Input/output error


On the other hand, one can produce files with both cases in this way:

touch b.txt
touch x.txt
mv x.txt B.txt
ls {b,B}.txt

yields

b.txt B.txt


Here is a workaround for packages with names like linux-libc-dev_4.4.0-97.120_amd64.deb:

cd any-temp-dir



apt-get download linux-libc-dev

ar x linux-libc-dev*deb

tar xJf data.tar.xz        # ignore all erors like ./usr/include/linux/netfilter/xt_DSCP.h: Cannot open: Input/output error

tar cJf data.tar.xz ./usr

ar rcs linux-libc-dev*.deb debian-binary control.tar.gz data.tar.xz 



sudo dpkg -i linux-libc-dev*.deb