dist-upgrade failed due to wanting to remove update-manager-kde

file inside /var/log/dist-upgrades

file inside /var/log/dist-upgrades

file inside /var/log/dist-upgrades

zipped the latest directory inside /var/log/dist-upgrade

Main.log has some more information:

2012-09-20 17:56:17,076 DEBUG none of the '['ubuntu-desktop', 'kubuntu-desktop', 'xubuntu-desktop', 'ubuntustudio-desktop', 'ichthux-desktop', 'mythbuntu-desktop', 'ubuntu-netbook', 'kubuntu-netbook']' meta-pkgs installed
2012-09-20 17:56:17,076 DEBUG guessing 'ubuntu-desktop' as missing meta-pkg
2012-09-20 17:56:17,218 DEBUG marked_install: 'ubuntu-desktop' -> '1'
2012-09-20 17:56:18,095 DEBUG blacklist expr 'update-manager' matches 'update-manager-kde'
2012-09-20 17:56:18,095 DEBUG The package 'update-manager-kde' is marked for removal but it's in the removal blacklist

Hi,

I tried to completely remove update-manager-kde manually via synaptic package manager and another popup appears "Mark additional required changes". There's several packages to be marked as removed such as:
alacarte
cryptsetup
evolution
evolution-couchdb
etc

When I do mark them all, and click Apply, another popup appears - "Could not apply changes! Fix broken packages first."

So I'm kind of stuck. I'm not able to upgrade any of my packages normally thru Update Manager and I'm also not able to upgrade my LTS version. I also tried Partial Upgrade option and that didn't work too.

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Digging some more this seems to be the root cause:

Investigating phonon
Package phonon has broken Depends on phonon-backend-gstreamer
  Considering phonon-backend-gstreamer 1 as a solution to phonon 18
Package phonon has broken Depends on phonon-backend
  Considering phonon-backend-xine -1 as a solution to phonon 18
  Added phonon-backend-xine to the remove list
  Fixing phonon via keep of phonon-backend-xine

Supposedly phonon-backend-gstreamer cannot be satisfied, so it wants to keep xine except xine can't be kept so it wants to remove all and everything kde including update-manager-kde.

Why backend-gstreamer canot be satisfied is a mystery to me though, from looking at the deps and the apt.log it marked every dependency for installation it appears.

I really think there is a foreign package invovled somewhere.

What happens if you run
sudo apt-get install phonon-backend-gstreamer && sudo apt-get purge phonon-backend-xine

If we look at the duplicates of this bug report only one of them has a large number of foreign packages and that is bug 1073064. Here are the foreign packages (found in Main.log) from the other bugs.

$ grep -r "Foreign: " *
bug-1044983/VarLogDistupgradeMainlog.txt:2012-09-02 15:56:36,618 DEBUG Foreign: opera adobe-flashplugin adobe-flash-properties-gtk skype gstreamer0.10-fluendo-plugins-mp3-partner
bug-1050147/VarLogDistupgradeMainlog.txt:2012-09-12 21:35:23,565 DEBUG Foreign:
bug-1053315/VarLogDistupgradeMainlog.txt:2012-09-20 17:55:29,298 DEBUG Foreign: google-talkplugin adobe-flashplugin acroread google-chrome-stable acroread-common google-musicmanager-beta skype adobe-flash-properties-gtk
bug-1053315/main.log:2012-09-20 17:55:29,298 DEBUG Foreign: google-talkplugin adobe-flashplugin acroread google-chrome-stable acroread-common google-musicmanager-beta skype adobe-flash-properties-gtk
bug-1054675/VarLogDistupgradeMainlog.txt:2012-09-22 19:02:54,648 DEBUG Foreign:
bug-1065557/VarLogDistupgradeMainlog.txt:2012-10-11 16:17:12,046 DEBUG Foreign: google-chrome-beta
bug-1067491/VarLogDistupgradeMainlog.txt:2012-10-16 20:20:07,906 DEBUG Foreign:
bug-1072467/VarLogDistupgradeMainlog.txt:2012-10-28 21:30:03,571 DEBUG Foreign: adobe-flashplugin opera skype google-chrome-stable acroread-common adobeair adobe-flash-properties-gtk
bug-1073205/VarLogDistupgradeMainlog.txt:2012-10-29 09:13:45,893 DEBUG Foreign: adobe-flashplugin adobe-flash-properties-kde adobe-flash-properties-gtk google-chrome-stable google-talkplugin
bug-1116692/VarLogDistupgradeMainlog.txt:2013-02-05 21:45:08,961 DEBUG Foreign:
bug-1202461/VarLogDistupgradeMainlog.txt:2013-07-17 20:46:31,142 DEBUG Foreign: google-chrome-stable acroread-common acroread skype

[Expired for update-manager (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

I had this problem upgrading from 13.10 to 14.04. I removed update-manager-kde using the synaptic package manager, and was then able to upgrade the distribution. The only thing I can add here is that my distribution started life without KDE--I installed ubuntu, and then some point later installed KDE using the package manager.