console-setup not marked as a dependency

[Jalmari Ikävalko]

Binary package hint: xorg

Upgrading from Maverick to Natty, ran into this when xorg package's turn was:

E: keyboard-configuration: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 127
E: xserver-xorg-core: dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
E: xserver-xorg-video-vmware: dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
E: xserver-xorg-video-openchrome: dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
E: xserver-xorg-video-mga: dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
E: xserver-xorg-video-geode: dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
E: xserver-xorg-input-wacom: dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
E: xserver-xorg-input-evdev: dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
E: xserver-xorg: dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
E: xorg: dependency problems - leaving unconfigured

"dpkg --configure -a"'s output was as follows:

tzaeru@dalmura:~/dataa$ sudo dpkg --configure -a
Setting up keyboard-configuration (1.57ubuntu10) ...
/var/lib/dpkg/info/i386/keyboard-configuration.postinst: 137: setupcon: not found
dpkg: error processing keyboard-configuration (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 127

Installing console-setup fixed the issue.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

I ran into a somewhat similar problem (maybe the same problem?) when upgrading one of my test machines machines last week.

It turned out that for some reason I had 'console-tools' installed, which conflicted with console-setup and prevented its installation, yet provided enough that X thought its dependencies were satisfied, however I got a similar set of error messages not finding setupcon and etc. Uninstalling console-setup and installing console-tools solved it for me as well.

I'm not entirely certain this is in fact an X bug, or if it's actually due to lower level changes. I think this is an issue that either the upgrader needs to help sort out, or that we need some directions from console-setup as to how X's dependencies need adjusted.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

@mvo, any thoughts on what might be going on here?

I've also added a console-setup task.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

console-tools doesn't conflict (directly; there may be some indirect chain) with console-setup. That said, all modern systems should have kbd rather than console-tools - we replaced console-tools with kbd in intrepid.

keyboard-configuration operates on the assumption that either console-setup or console-setup-mini will be installed to provide setupcon. console-setup is in ubuntu-minimal and should be on all Ubuntu systems. I don't think it would be a good idea for keyboard-configuration to depend on console-setup for various reasons, but I'll change keyboard-configuration.postinst to tolerate console-setup's absence.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Oh, and to be clear, console-setup (and keyboard-configuration) is a layer that builds on top of low-level tools provided by either kbd or console-tools. console-tools and console-setup are not at the same layer and so are not alternatives for each other.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I don't see an xorg bug here for you to fix. Unless you know of something, I think you can close that task as Invalid.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Okay, closing the xorg task.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package console-setup - 1.57ubuntu12

---------------
console-setup (1.57ubuntu12) natty; urgency=low

  * Tolerate absence of setupcon in keyboard-configuration.postinst
    (LP: #733497).
 -- Colin Watson <email address hidden> Fri, 18 Mar 2011 11:28:34 +0000