Server install hang (Debian bug 425397)

[Eli Collins]

Binary package hint: debian-installer

About 30% of the time (over hundreds of installations) when I install Ubuntu 7.04 Server into an SMP VMware VM (using ubuntu-7.04-server-i386.iso, checked against the latest MD5SUMS) I get a hang during the installation process at 77% of the way through "Configuring popularity-contest" I broke out into a shell, chrooted into the install, and using pstree and gdb discovered the following:

...
   perl taskel --new-install [ wait()ing for child ]
       perl debconf/frontend [ blocked on read() ]
           perl debconf-apt-progress [ blocked on read() ]
               apt-get [ exited, zombie ]

This looks a lot like debian bug 425397.

I'll try to reproduce with DEBCONF_DEBUG=5 warn to confirm.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Yes, we have Ubuntu bug 62986 for this as well, so I'll mark this as a duplicate. Thanks for your report.