I ran this command: install software-properties-common
It produced this output:
Setting up mysql-common (5.7.21-0ubuntu0.16.04.1) ...
update-alternatives: error: alternative path /etc/mysql/my.cnf.fallback doesn't exist
dpkg: error processing package mysql-common (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mysql-client-5.7:
mysql-client-5.7 depends on mysql-common (>= 5.5); however:
Package mysql-common is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing package mysql-client-5.7 (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.
Errors were encountered while processing:
mysql-common
mysql-client-5.7
Do you actually need MySQL on this server? If not, you may uninstall it.
I wonder why you get this error while installing software-properties-common, because that package does not seem to depend on MySQL, too:
You are right, mysql have nothing to do with this package. I found that I get this error on other packages too, I did some research and fixed the error. Aparently the software-properties-common was successfuly installed on my first try, beside the error I was getting.
I did this:
I copied /etc/mysql/my.cnf to /etc/mysql/my.cnf.fallback (guessing that this would have been a relatively less important “fallback” config file);
yes, that was it! the error had nothing to do with the package I was trying to install, but to ‘error’ did nothing because the package was installed anyway. In my previous reply I explain what I did so solve this unrelated problem. thanks