How to resolve issue related to installing Java 8 on Debian 8 (Jessie)?

Question

I'm a Linux noob, and I trying to follow a variety of articles on installing Java 8 on Debian 8 (Jessie):

• https://www.vultr.com/docs/how-to-install-java-8-and-dcevm-on-debian-8-jessie
• https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-java-with-apt-get-on-debian-8
• https://linux-tips.com/t/how-to-install-java-8-on-debian-jessie/349

However, I get a bunch of dependency errors preventing me from installing openjdk-8-jre.

apt-get -f install openjdk-8-jre

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
You might want to run 'apt-get -f install' to correct these:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 openjdk-8-jre : Depends: openjdk-8-jre-headless (= 8u162-b12-1~bpo8+1)
                 Depends: libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.24) but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: libxrandr2 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: libxinerama1 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: libgl1-mesa-glx but it is not going to be installed or
                          libgl1
                 Depends: libgtk-3-0 but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: libatk-wrapper-java-jni (>= 0.30.4-0ubuntu2) but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: libasound2 (>= 1.0.16)
                 Depends: libgif4 (>= 4.1.4) but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: libpulse0 (>= 0.99.1) but it is not going to be installed
                 Depends: libxext6 but it is not going to be installed
                 Recommends: fonts-dejavu-extra but it is not going to be installed

Other configuration information:

cat /proc/version:
    head
    Linux version 3.16.0-5-amd64 (debian-kernel@lists.debian.org) (gcc version 4.8.4 (Debian 4.8.4-1) ) #1 SMP Debian 3.16.51-3+deb8u1 (2018-01-08)

cat /etc/*-release

    ID=azure
    AZURE_IMAGE_VERSION="8.0.201804150"
    BUILD_INFO_URL="https://azure-build.debian.net/job/image-jessie/933/"
    PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 8 (jessie)"
    NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
    VERSION_ID="8"
    VERSION="8 (jessie)"
    ID=debian
    HOME_URL="http://www.debian.org/"
    SUPPORT_URL="http://www.debian.org/support"
    BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"

/etc/apt# head -999 sources.list

    deb http://debian-archive.trafficmanager.net/debian jessie main
    deb-src http://debian-archive.trafficmanager.net/debian jessie main
    deb http://debian-archive.trafficmanager.net/debian-security jessie/updates main
    deb-src http://debian-archive.trafficmanager.net/debian-security jessie/updates main
    deb http://debian-archive.trafficmanager.net/debian jessie-updates main
    deb-src http://debian-archive.trafficmanager.net/debian jessie-updates main
    deb http://debian-archive.trafficmanager.net/debian jessie-backports main
    deb-src http://debian-archive.trafficmanager.net/debian jessie-backports main
    deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian jessie-backports main

/etc/apt/sources.list.d# head -999 *

    ==> jessie-backports.list <==
        deb http://http.debian.net/debian jessie-backports main

    ==> matrix.list <==
        deb https://matrix.org/packages/debian/ jessie main
        deb-src https://matrix.org/packages/debian/ jessie main

    ==> webupd8team-java.list <==
        deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu xenial main
        deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/java/ubuntu xenial main

I don't know how to diagnose the problem and resolve it. Can somebody point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

Answering my own question; in hopes it might help somebody else; because I spent 2+ days being frustrated.

It turns out that the reason it was failing is there is another package that I was trying to install that was dependent on Java8. The fact that this package was trying to install, is what prevented Java8 from being installed. Only after I did a:

apt-get --purge remove packagename

Java could then install. Once java was installed, I could then reinstall the offending package.

Answer 2

Another solution is sudo apt-get purge openjdk-\\* -y I wrote a shell script that does everything including removing other versions of Java. See: https://github.com/Nat-As/installjava8