Wine has stopped working. How to fix?

[eabaggot]

I am on Linux Mint 19.1 Cinnamon.
Somehow, my wine installation has stopped working, and I cannot get it going again.

I think it happened when I ran this, to get the source to compile a music notation program:

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    sudo apt-get build-dep musescore  
    [sudo] password for joe:   
    Reading package lists... Done  
    Reading package lists... Done  
    Building dependency tree         
    Reading state information... Done  
    The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:  
<lots of packages follow>  
    The following packages will be REMOVED:  
    libasound2-plugins:i386 libjack-jackd2-0 libjack-jackd2-0:i386 wine-stable wine-stable-i386:i386  
    winehq-stable winetricks  
    The following NEW packages will be installed:  
<lots of packages follow>  

I have no idea why this request decide that the wine packages needed removal. Nevertheless, after this, I could not start any of my wine apps. Also, the wine folder under /opt has disappeared. The .wine folder under $HOME is still there. Note above, the wine packages were REMOVED here, for some reason I do not understand.

I originally installed from WineHQ. When I try to reinstall, I get this error:

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    $ sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable  
    [sudo] password for joe:     
    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:  
     winehq-stable : Depends: wine-stable (= 3.0.4~bionic)  
    E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.  

I also cannot install it from my Synaptic Package Manager, or from the distro Software Center either. I ran the "Fix Broken Packages", but that did not fix this problem.

If somebody has some suggestions, please chime in. If I cannot solve this, next step will be to pull in a TimeShift snapshot.

[dimesio]

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  The following packages have unmet dependencies:  
     winehq-stable : Depends: wine-stable (= 3.0.4~bionic)  
    E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.  

The way to track down dependency issues is to work your way backwards. Try installing wine-stable, and see what apt complains about. Keep going backwards until you find out what's blocking everything, and fix that. As to what it's likely to be, my guess from what you've posted is that it has something to do with that libasound2-plugins:i386 package that was also removed.

[eabaggot]

Code: Select all

  The following packages have unmet dependencies:  
     winehq-stable : Depends: wine-stable (= 3.0.4~bionic)  
    E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.  

The way to track down dependency issues is to work your way backwards. Try installing wine-stable, and see what apt complains about. Keep going backwards until you find out what's blocking everything, and fix that. As to what it's likely to be, my guess from what you've posted is that it has something to do with that libasound2-plugins:i386 package that was also removed.

This is the solution. I actually found it after I posted, from searching these forums. Apparently it is not an uncommon situation. In my case it was fixed by

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$ sudo apt-get install libasound2-plugins:i386
Then
$ sudo apt-get install wine-stable-i386
and
$ sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-stable

and everything was totally back to normal.

Two things bug me, though.
1. Why did pulling down this package of source code cause the system to decide that those completely unrelated packages need to be removed, and
2. If I had not captured that message in the tidal wave of text that came down, I would have missed the clue as to how to remedy the problem. And trying to reinstall just wine-stable gave no indication as to what the missing dependencies were. It just said things were broken.
All the same, thanks so much for replying. Any more problems I might have, I will search the forum first.

Ed