Question

It appears to be an error. I’m not sure if I should worry about it or not.

FYI: I’m just picking up Ubuntu (10.04) and want to develop a core understanding of how it all works, which is why I’d like to know what this all means. I don’t have specific problem that needs solving.

Answer 1

It shows you the current state of the package as the package-manager sees it. It’s specifically talking about the 1st letter of the first column.

root@pbx1:/var/lib/openfire/plugins# dpkg -l |more 
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                                Version                      Description
+++-===================================-============================-==========================================================================
ii  acpi                                1.5-2                        displays information on ACPI devices
ii  acpi-support-base                   0.137-5                      scripts for handling base ACPI events such as the power button
ii  acpid                               1:2.0.7-1                    Advanced Configuration and Power Interface event daemon

For example… the “acpi” package, the 1st column says “ii ” which means… we requested it to be installed, it is installed, and currently there are no errors. (desired = Installed, Status = Inst, and Err = (none))

The key is to look at the capital letter for each value. i.e. desired can be “u, i, r, p, h” and status can be “n, i, c, u, f, h, w, t” and finally, the Err column can be “[nothing], r”