Removing broken packages in Ubuntu

There was an error when I tried to remove a package, so it was left in a broken state. I tried the following:

sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq rvm

Output:

(Reading database ... 41743 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing rvm (1.29.3-1) ...
bash: rvm: command not found
dpkg: error processing package rvm (--purge):
 subprocess installed pre-removal script returned error exit status 127
Errors were encountered while processing:
 rvm

.

sudo dpkg --purge rvm

Output: same as above

sudo dpkg -i --force-overwrite package

Output:

dpkg: error processing archive rvm (--install):
 cannot access archive: No such file or directory
Errors were encountered while processing:
 rvm

Is there a way to force remove it, ignoring all errors? I'm using Ubuntu 16.04 on WSL.

I faced this problem with a broken package, rvm. I tried many things like sudo apt install -f and sudo dpkg --purge --force-all rvm but nothing worked. Finally I managed to find a blog post that explains how to remove broken packages on Debian/Ubuntu.

Here are the steps.

1. Find your package in /var/lib/dpkg/info, for example using: ls -l /var/lib/dpkg/info | grep <package>

2. Move the package folder to another location, like suggested in the blog post I mentioned before.

    sudo mv /var/lib/dpkg/info/<package>.* /tmp/
   

3. Run the following command:

    sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq <package>
   

So as an example I solved my problem by executing the following commands in a terminal:

sudo mv /var/lib/dpkg/info/rvm.* /tmp/
sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq rvm

1. Install synaptic package manager.

    sudo apt-get install synaptic
   

2. Open synaptic package manager and search for the package which you want to remove or install or change

Done!

so in my case perl-modules-5.22 was corrupt. I followed the steps in the accepted answer, but this did not resolve my issue.

to fix I additionally had to:

sudo apt remove -f perl-modules-5.22
sudo apt upgrade -y

sudo apt remove -f <package_name>

Ex: sudo apt remove mongo* will remove all mongo db packages.

I had a similar issue where a package was missing files, and hence could not be removed. The error message was "Stopping Service. Cannot stop ***.service, service is not running" Service is not running since service file is missing.

Shouldn't it be easier to purge the package then? I guess not.

Still: run aptitude

sudo aptitude

find the package in question, check its info, verify which versions exist. Install a different version from the one you have presently (ideally one patch version up or down from what you have to avoid too much change) - it will ask you what to do with the missing files - choose to replace from the version being installed

sudo apt-get install <package>=<version>

Once all such missing files are replaced, you should be able to do standard purge

sudo apt-get purge <package>

Execute the command as a root

sudo apt-get install -f

You need elevated privileges for the package manager.