"Use of uninitialized value $class in hash element" message during package install

[Ricardo Bánffy]

Binary package hint: spell

When installing package spell, I was confronted with the following:

------------------------
$ sudo aptitude install spell
[sudo] password for ricardo:
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  iamerican{a} ispell{a} spell
0 packages upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 606kB of archives. After unpacking 1,782kB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] y
Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/main ispell i386 3.1.20.0-7 [166kB]
Get:2 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/main iamerican i386 3.1.20.0-7 [427kB]
Get:3 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/universe spell i386 1.0-24 [14.0kB]
Fetched 606kB in 5s (102kB/s)
Preconfiguring packages ...
Use of uninitialized value $class in hash element at /usr/share/dictionaries-common/dc-debconf-default-value.pl line 73, <STDIN> line 7.
Selecting previously deselected package ispell.
(Reading database ... 311582 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking ispell (from .../ispell_3.1.20.0-7_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package iamerican.
Unpacking iamerican (from .../iamerican_3.1.20.0-7_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package spell.
Unpacking spell (from .../archives/spell_1.0-24_i386.deb) ...
Processing triggers for doc-base ...
Processing 1 added doc-base file(s)...
Registering documents with scrollkeeper...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Processing triggers for install-info ...
Setting up iamerican (3.1.20.0-7) ...
Setting up ispell (3.1.20.0-7) ...
Setting up spell (1.0-24) ...
------------------------

The package installed successfully, but the message may indicate a deeper problem

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: spell 1.0-24
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-25.44-generic 2.6.35.10
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-25-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Feb 8 04:20:25 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Beta i386 (20100406.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en_GB:en
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: spell

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

Thanks for reporting this issue.

While I saw the same message when installing spell on Ubuntu 10.10, it was not shown when installing it on Ubuntu 11.04. Therefore I would assume this issue has been resolved in the meantime. Since 10.10 reached end of life on April 10, 2012, the fix will unfortunately not be backported.

Feel free to report any bugs you find in the future.