Some time ago I ran into trouble while installing debian packages (something went wrong and a few packages claimed to be installed – their corresponding files however didn’t make it to disk).
While I was able to fix most of them from time to time I still got random errors that – after some investigation – were caused by missing files of some packages.
So I finally decided to fix this once and for all.
Find packages with missing files
The first step is to list all installed packages using dpkg. After that we filter all unneeded output and finally check whether the path is a file, a directory or a symbolic link:
linux # dpkg --get-selections | grep 'install$' | cut -f1 | xargs -n1 dpkg -L | grep "^/" | while read FILE; do if [ ! -f "$FILE" -a ! -d "$FILE" -a ! -L "$FILE" ]; then echo "$FILE"; fi; done
/usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/status/24/xfpm-ups-100-charging.svg
/usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/status/24/xfpm-ups-100.svg
/usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/status/24/xfpm-ups-charged.svg
/usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/status/24/xfpm-ups-missing.svg
<...>Now we got a list of the missing files. The package containing the file can easily be found with:
linux # dpkg -S /usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/status/24/xfpm-ups-100-charging.svg
ubuntu-mono: /usr/share/icons/ubuntu-mono-dark/status/24/xfpm-ups-100-charging.svgSo let’s just re-install this file and hope for the best:
linux # apt install --reinstall ubuntu-mono