Linux server broken packages

Question

So, I'm trying to install the PHP5 cURL package on a Ubuntu Lucid 10.04.3 server. My concern is that there are broken packages on this server and if I install this package with the broken packages that it may mess up PHP or Apache.

I've already tried sudo apt-get clean and sudo dpkg --configure -a; sudo apt-get -f install but the broken packages are still there.

If just do a sudo aptitude install php5-curl do you think this will affect MySQL or anything else that uses PHP5?

Output of sudo aptitude install php5-curl:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
The following packages are BROKEN:
  php5-cli php5-gd php5-mysql php5-xmlrpc
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  php5-curl
The following packages will be upgraded:
  libapache2-mod-php5 php5-common
2 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 101 not upgraded.
Need to get 3571kB of archives. After unpacking 2621kB will be used.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  php5-gd: Depends: php5-common (= 5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6) but 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.18 is to be installed.
  php5-xmlrpc: Depends: php5-common (= 5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6) but 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.18 is to be installed.
  php5-mysql: Depends: php5-common (= 5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6) but 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.18 is to be installed.
  php5-cli: Depends: php5-common (= 5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6) but 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.18 is to be installed.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

Install the following packages:
php5-curl [5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6 (karmic)]

Keep the following packages at their current version:
libapache2-mod-php5 [5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6 (karmic, now)]
php5-common [5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6 (karmic, now)]

Score is -9900

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?]

Answer 1

Ok here's what I ended up doing:

First of all, I would recommend using aptitude instead of apt-get because it makes better choices by default. So, I went ahead and accepted aptitude's first solution, which was to leave everything the same version except for php5-curl which was to be installed. Trust me, you don't want to update the php5-common or libapache2-mod-php5 packages on a mission-critical server because they have a million dependencies. Then the server couldn't download the package because the repositories are outdated on this server (it's 10.04 remember) and it couldn't find the .deb file. So, I copied the name php5-curl-5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6_amd_64.deb and Google'd it and found site hosting the .deb file. I then did the following commands to install this package without causing dependency hell:

$ wget http://www.thesitewhereyoufounditongoogle.com/php5-curl-5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6_amd_64.deb

$ sudo dpkg -i php5-curl-5.2.10.dfsg.1-2ubuntu6_amd_64.deb

and then of course restart Apache

$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

And voila! cURL was installed.