unable to install 32 bit libraries on 64 bit ubuntu

Question

I am trying to set up android dev environment on my 64 bit ubuntu 14.04.

But I am getting a dependency deadlock while trying to install 32 bit libraries.

I have added multi-architecture support. sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386

But when I try to install the libraries, I get this

sudo apt-get install libc6:i386 libncurses5:i386 libstdc++6:i386 

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:
libc6:i386 : Depends: libgcc1:i386 but it is not going to be installed
libstdc++6:i386 : Depends: libgcc1:i386 (>= 1:4.1.1) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

I have tried to install libgcc along with this too, but that leads to just an infinite loop of other dependencies.

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

So it looks like my system libraries were screwed up when I upgraded Ubuntu using the system upgrader. Finally I needed to reinstall my root partition and I am up and running !

Lesson - Do no upgrade your release unless you want to go into weird dependency issues.