update-manager freezes with debconf question in terminal during feisty->gutsy upgrade

[Christopher Armstrong]

Binary package hint: update-manager

radix@haruko ~% dpkg -l |grep update-manager
ii update-manager 0.59.24 GNOME application that manages apt updates
ii update-manager-core 0.59.24 manage release upgrades

I've also manually applied the patch from bug #141060 so that I can actually run the upgrader.

I got to the "Installing the upgrades" step in the upgrade tool, and it sat there for a while, doing nothing, so I expanded the terminal thing to find the following text. This is the full transcript (it's short; it didn't get very far).

In case it matters, I started update-manager from deskbar, typing 'update-manager -c -d'.

debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Dialog
debconf: (Dialog frontend will not work on a dumb terminal, an emacs shell buffer, or without a controlling terminal.)
debconf: falling back to frontend: Readline
Extracting templates from packages: 100%
Preconfiguring packages ...
Configuring sysstat
-------------------

Format of daily data statistics files has changed in version 7.1.3 of sysstat
and is *not* compatible with the previous one!

If you activate this option, any existing data files in /var/log/sysstat/
directory will be deleted.

If you don't want to remove them automatically, please remove them by hand
later, in order for the sar command to work properly.

Do you want post-installation script to remove these data files?

END OF TRANSCRIPT

[Christopher Armstrong (radix)]

:-(

I found a similar case while trying to upgrade a different machine. This one didn't happen until much farther into the upgrade process. Here's the recent transcript:

START TRANSCRIPT

Unpacking replacement libpam-runtime ...
Setting up libpam-foreground (0.4-1) ...

Setting up libpam-runtime (0.99.7.1-4ubuntu3) ...

(Reading database ... 227548 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace libpam0g 0.79-4ubuntu2 (using .../libpam0g_0.99.7.1-4ubuntu3_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement libpam0g ...
Setting up libpam0g (0.99.7.1-4ubuntu3) ...
debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Dialog
debconf: (Dialog frontend will not work on a dumb terminal, an emacs shell buffer, or without a controlling terminal.)
debconf: falling back to frontend: Readline
Checking for services that may need to be restarted...Checking init scripts...
Configuring libpam0g
--------------------

Most services that use PAM need to be restarted to use modules built for this
new version of libpam. Please review the following space-separated list of
init.d scripts for services to be restarted now, and correct it if needed.

Among the services that require restarting are the display managers kdm, wdm,
and xdm. If you are upgrading from within an X session started with one of
these display managers, restarting that service will terminate your X session.
It is recommended that you remove that service from the list here and restart it
later at your convenience.

Some other services such as xscreensaver, gnome-screensaver, and xlockmore
cannot be restarted for you. You will not be able to authenticate to these
services until you restart them manually.

Services to restart for PAM library upgrade:

[actuosus (actuosus)]

The same problem.

[Ratsock (ratsock)]

Same problem here. Not sure about a workaround.

[Mackenzie Morgan (maco.m)]

Thanks for reporting this. Is this still an issue? When this occurs, does it present you with options, or does it just hang?

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!