scrollkeeper crashes during upgrade and causes maintainer script failures for various packages

[Roberto Zinelli]

Binary package hint: update-manager

Upgrading 7.10 to 8.04

Configuration of "scrollkeeper" package crashed and then many packets
Synaptic, gnome-app-manager, vlc, etc... crashed in upgrading.
(it seems a XML error!)

ProblemType: Package
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Apr 25 11:08:56 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
ErrorMessage: ErrorMessage: SystemError in cache.commit(): E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: update-manager 1:0.87.24
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: update-manager
Title: package update-manager 1:0.87.24 failed to install/upgrade: ErrorMessage: SystemError in cache.commit(): E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
Uname: Linux 2.6.22-14-386 i686

TESTCASE (gnome-games)
ensure gnome-games-data is installed
$ dpkg-reconfigure scrollkeeper
operation fails on Hardy, should succeed for updated version of gnome-games-data

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreport.

Please attach the files in /var/log/dist-upgrade/ to this bugreport.

Thanks,
 Michael

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for the logs! Here is the error:

2008-04-25 10:43:05,544 ERROR got an error from dpkg for pkg: 'scrollkeeper': 'il sottoprocesso post-installation script è stato terminato dal segnale (Interrupt)

Configuro scrollkeeper (0.3.14-15ubuntu1) ...
Installo la nuova versione del file di configurazione /etc/cron.monthly/scrollkeeper ...
Rebuilding the database. This may take some time.
///usr/share/gnome/help/blackjack/el/blackjack.xml:402: parser error : Entity 'Βοήθεια' not defined
                  <para><guimenuitem>Προτιμήσεις&Βοήθεια;</gui
                                                                           ^
dpkg: errore processando scrollkeeper (--configure):
 il sottoprocesso post-installation script è stato terminato dal segnale (Interrupt)
dpkg: problemi con le dipendenze impediscono la configurazione di bug-buddy:
 bug-buddy dipende da scrollkeeper; comunque:
  Il pacchetto scrollkeeper non è ancora configurato.
dpkg: errore processando bug-buddy (--configure):
 problemi con le dipendenze - lasciato non configurato

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

This is bad XML in the 2.22.1.1 version of gnome-games-data, so it's not surprising that scrollkeeper balks on it (though of course that's a disruptive thing for scrollkeeper to do under the circumstances). The 2.22.2.1 version of gnome-games-data in hardy-proposed no longer has this bad XML, so I believe this bug is resolved there - it would be great if someone could test this to verify.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

gnome-games 2.22.2.1-0ubuntu1 copied to intrepid.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I get the "Entity 'Βοήθεια' not defined" error with hardy-final's gnome-games-data. The version from hardy-proposed works fine.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Copied to hardy-updates.

[nickhtp (nick1977)]

Glancing at Martin Pitt's short note I think that this long term, ongoing issue is linked to character encoding and/or a file or library which is co-dependent to XML. The same cyclical error that came up in 7.X comes up in 8.04.1 now:

nick@homemachine:~/$ ps axu|grep scrollk
root 7313 0.0 0.1 1772 440 ? SN 20:33 0:00 /bin/sh /etc/cron.monthly/scrollkeeper
root 7314 0.0 0.1 1772 448 ? SN 20:33 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/scrollkeeper-rebuilddb -q
root 7321 13.5 5.4 16044 13824 ? RN 20:33 1:15 scrollkeeper-update -q -p /var/lib/scrollkeeper
root 8585 41.4 3.9 12904 10184 pts/2 R+ 20:40 1:16 /usr/bin/scrollkeeper-update -q
nick 9632 0.0 0.3 3004 768 pts/0 R+ 20:43 0:00 grep scrollk
nick@homemachine:~/$ sudo chmod 000 /usr/bin/scrollk*
nick@homemachine:~/$ sudo kill 8585

I suppose "muting" the file permissions of only scrollkeeper-update will make my Add/Remove upgrades work in the interim. ~$ uname -r

2.6.24-19-generic

[Loïc Minier (lool)]

Michael, I think you confirmed the scrollkeeper task, do you have an idea of what needs to be done? I guess you might have in mind to verify the XML we ship during build instead of breaking on install?

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

scrollkeeper has been removed from the development release of Ubuntu and is not being maintained. Further bug fixing is extremely unlikely.