Update manager hangs after authenticating, after a while reports "it seems that the daemon died"

[Sandro Mani]

Binary package hint: update-manager

Running up-to-date karmic as of 8.10.09

Problem: after running update-manager (with available updates), clicking "Install Updates" the authenticate dialog appears. After inserting the password and pressing enter, occasionally the authenticate dialog just stays there but without the password field. The Cancel and Authenticate buttons have no effect, but the X button has, after which a "waiting for other tasks" window appears. Finally, after some minutes, another window pops up telling "it seems that the daemon died".

I attached three screenshots that show the described issue as well as the output of ps -fA captured while the "waiting for other tasks" window was displaying.

I am not sure whether this is a problem with update-manager or policykit.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Oct 8 01:16:13 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: update-manager 1:0.125.6
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-12.40-generic
SourcePackage: update-manager
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-12-generic x86_64

[Sandro Mani (sandromani)]

Just noticed: it appears that the updates are actually installed while the gui "hangs" (though without any visual feedback).

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

The only thing that looks suspicious is in your .xsession-errors is:
(polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:2267): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_destroy: assertion `GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed