package passwd 1:4.1.4.2+svn3283-3ubuntu2 failed to install/upgrade: ErrorMessage: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1

[Randall Srong]

won,t allow distro upgrade3

ProblemType: Package
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: passwd 1:4.1.4.2+svn3283-3ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-8.42-generic 2.6.38.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-8-generic i686
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4.1
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Sep 12 06:45:01 2013
ErrorMessage: ErrorMessage: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release i386 (20110427.1)
SourcePackage: shadow
Title: package passwd 1:4.1.4.2+svn3283-3ubuntu2 failed to install/upgrade: ErrorMessage: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2013-09-12 (0 days ago)

[Seth Arnold (seth-arnold)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but this appears to be a "regular" (non-security) bug. I have unmarked it as a security issue since this bug does not show evidence of allowing attackers to cross privilege boundaries nor directly cause loss of data/privacy. Please feel free to report any other bugs you may find.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

From the log file.

Setting up passwd (1:4.1.4.2+svn3283-3ubuntu2) ...^M
/var/lib/dpkg/info/passwd.postinst: 35: grep: not found^M
groupadd: group 'shadow' already exists^M
Group ID 42 has been allocated for the shadow group. You have either^M
used 42 yourself or created a shadow group with a different ID.^M
Please correct this problem and reconfigure with dpkg --configure passwd''.^M
^M
Note that both user and group IDs in the range 0-99 are globally^M
allocated by the Debian project and must be the same on every Debian^M
system.^M
dpkg: error processing passwd (--configure):^M
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1^M
Errors were encountered while processing:^M
 passwd^M

Do you not have grep installed on your system? You could check via 'apt-cache policy grep' in a terminal.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Any system that does not have the 'grep' command on the path is corrupted, either by user action or by a disk or filesystem failure. Closing this bug as invalid.

[laszlo gombos (gombi)]

> Any system that does not have the 'grep' command on the path is corrupted, either by user action or by a disk or filesystem failure.

This is not true IMHO. If the packages needs grep, than it should grep package should be marked as a dependency for the passwd package, which is not the case today.