[Feisty] failures in update to feisty

[José M. López-Cepero]

I updated yesterday from Edgy to Feisty by running "update-manager -c -d". The upgrade got through without errors until the "configuring packages" phase. Then, the update of five packages failed:

vim
vim-tiny
ubuntu-minimal
nano
ubuntu-standard
mc

Following the update-manager prompts, I'm reporting this bug and attaching the contents of /var/log/dist-upgrade after this message.

I tried mc after the update and it worked; it seemed not to have updated to the last version, though. Strangely enough, apt-get dist-upgrade did not work the first time I ran it, but did work the second or third. I don't think I did anything package related between one run and the next, but maybe the error was related to still open files or something similar.

I also experienced a problem with gnome-panel during the upgrade; it froze in an unresponsive state. Killing it with "killall gnome-panel" made it return to normal.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreport.

I was not yet able to reproduce this problem. There is obviously a bug, can you please post the output of "locale" so that I can try to reporduce it with your settings?

Thanks,
 Michael

[Dave Morley (davmor2)]

If it is gb then the archive stopped for a while but is now working okay again. This might of been the cause.

[José M. López-Cepero (cepe)]

Sorry for the delay. I have not been able to put my dirty paws on the updated computer again until now.

This is the output of "locale", which I pressume is a rather standard Spanish one:

LANG=es_ES.UTF-8@euro
LANGUAGE=es_ES.UTF-8@euro
LC_CTYPE="es_ES.UTF-8@euro"
LC_NUMERIC="es_ES.UTF-8@euro"
LC_TIME="es_ES.UTF-8@euro"
LC_COLLATE="es_ES.UTF-8@euro"
LC_MONETARY="es_ES.UTF-8@euro"
LC_MESSAGES="es_ES.UTF-8@euro"
LC_PAPER="es_ES.UTF-8@euro"
LC_NAME="es_ES.UTF-8@euro"
LC_ADDRESS="es_ES.UTF-8@euro"
LC_TELEPHONE="es_ES.UTF-8@euro"
LC_MEASUREMENT="es_ES.UTF-8@euro"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="es_ES.UTF-8@euro"
LC_ALL=

By the way, I don't think an archive failure had anything to do with my particular error, since a lot of other packages had been downloaded flawlessly, and I'm rather sure that no new packages were downloaded before the successful installation.

And maybe it was some temporary glitch which has already been corrected. Updating some 900 packages in an upgrade to an _alpha_ version and getting 6 small failures doesn't really seem that unreasonable :)

Thanks to you all, CP

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

here is why its failing. Can you please translate this into english for me?

2007-01-14 13:23:16,301 ERROR got an error from dpkg for pkg: 'vim': 'el subproceso post-installation script devolvió el código de salida de error 2
'
2007-01-14 13:25:03,227 ERROR got an error from dpkg for pkg: 'vim-tiny': 'el subproceso post-installation script devolvió el código de salida de error 2
'
2007-01-14 13:25:05,388 ERROR got an error from dpkg for pkg: 'ubuntu-minimal': 'problemas de dependencias - se deja sin configurar
'
2007-01-14 13:25:08,253 DEBUG got a conffile-prompt from dpkg for file: '/etc/hdparm.conf'
2007-01-14 13:25:55,584 ERROR got an error from dpkg for pkg: 'nano': 'el subproceso post-installation script devolvió el código de salida de error 2
'
2007-01-14 13:26:05,908 ERROR got an error from dpkg for pkg: 'ubuntu-standard': 'problemas de dependencias - se deja sin configurar
'
2007-01-14 13:32:01,114 ERROR got an error from dpkg for pkg: 'mc': 'el subproceso post-installation script devolvió el código de salida de error 2
'
2007-01-14 14:06:29,428 DEBUG got a conffile-prompt from dpkg for file: '/etc/ntp.conf'
2007-01-14 14:10:57,820 ERROR SystemError from cache.commit(): installArchives() failed

[José M. López-Cepero (cepe)]

Sure!

'el subproceso post-installation script devolvió el código de salida de error 2' == "the post-installation script subprocess returned error exit code 2"

'problemas de dependencias - se deja sin configurar' == "dependency problems - leaving unconfigured".

I think all the Spanish messages in the output are either of the first or the second kind.

Best regards, CP

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

They are thank you. Can you please see if ubuntu-desktop is installed than can you please run sudo dpkg --configure -a and attach the output here.

[José M. López-Cepero (cepe)]

Just tested:

 - Ubuntu-desktop was not installed. I have installed it via apt-get (it also pulled gimp-python) and got no errors.

 - dpkg --reconfigure -a did not produce any output.

[John Vivirito (gnomefreak)]

Jose in the next few days please play with update-manager to see if you still have issues.

[José M. López-Cepero (cepe)]

I'm afraid I do. I had a laptop with Ubuntu 6.06 LTS lying around. Yesterday I updated to Edgy, all was apparently working OK. Today I am upgrading it to Feisty with the update manager, and after quite a few hours (the lack of ata_piix support makes the update glacially slow) now I'm at the end, and the same packages are failing. vim, vim-tiny and mc have already failed.

Locales are all es.ES_UTF8 except LC_ALL (blank) and LANGUAGE (which contains es_ES:es:en_GB:en).

I will report the complete results later.

[José M. López-Cepero (cepe)]

As expected, the installation failed before the cleanup phase. The error message that appeared in the box was "installPackages() failed".

I ran sudo dpkg --reconfigure -a and vim, nano, mc, vim-tiny, ubuntu-standard and ubuntu-minimal were configured with no error. It seems that the system is now in a clean state. ubuntu-* were left unconfigured because they depended on vim and/or nano.

Following with sudo apt-get dist-upgrade removed the 2.6.17 kernel docs and replaced them with the 2.6.20 ones. Doesn't seem related.

ubuntu-desktop was installed in the Edgy phase and was updated correctly by the update manager, so no problem there.

sudo update-manager -d -c did not report any new distribution available.

Now for an interesting fact. All four failing packages do so because of the postinst script returning exit code 2. So it's probably some problem with the scripts. There are two possibilities:

 - A common syntax error in them. bash returns 2 if it finds a syntax error in a shell script file. I don't think this is a good explanation, because if there was a "hard" syntax error on the postinst files, it should happen always, not only when upgrading.
 - All four postinst scripts have in common the use of the alternatives mechanism. Specifically, all four invoke update-alternatives, which is the only common command among them other than the shell constructs. Is there any possible event which would make the alternatives mechanism not work during part of the update? It might pay to investigate a bit further.

Thanks, Jose

[jeff419 (adept-marketing-concepts)]

I had the same problem, and I don't know how to revert to Edgy, is that possible?

[José M. López-Cepero (cepe)]

Hi Jeff,

I'm afraid that reverting to Edgy is not straightforward. However, I can report that, after running "sudo dpkg --reconfigure -a" two times and installing ubuntu-desktop, my system runs OK (there are rough edges, but feisty is still beta after all). Why do you want to revert to edgy? Did you have any other, more serious problem?

Best regards

[Rog (roger-mindsocket)]

I had the same problem. When I ran apt-get install -f, it highlighted the problem:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libexiv2-0.10 libmysqlclient15-dev linux-headers-2.6.17-11-generic postgresql-client-8.2 postgresql-client-common liboobs-1-2 libmeanwhile1
  linux-headers-2.6.17-11 libavahi-core4
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
5 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B of archives.
After unpacking 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Setting up vim-tiny (7.0-164+1ubuntu3) ...
update-alternatives: unable to make /usr/share/man/ru.KOI8-R/man1/ex.1.gz.dpkg-tmp a symlink to /etc/alternatives/ex.ru.KOI8-R.1.gz: No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing vim-tiny (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 2
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of ubuntu-minimal:
 ubuntu-minimal depends on vim-tiny; however:
  Package vim-tiny is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing ubuntu-minimal (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Setting up nano (2.0.2-1) ...
update-alternatives: unable to make /usr/share/man/ru.UTF-8/man1/editor.1.gz.dpkg-tmp a symlink to /etc/alternatives/editor.ru.UTF-8.1.gz: No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing nano (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 2
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of ubuntu-standard:
 ubuntu-standard depends on nano; however:
  Package nano is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing ubuntu-standard (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Setting up vim (7.0-164+1ubuntu3) ...
update-alternatives: unable to make /usr/share/man/ru.UTF-8/man1/editor.1.gz.dpkg-tmp a symlink to /etc/alternatives/editor.ru.UTF-8.1.gz: No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing vim (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
 vim-tiny
 ubuntu-minimal
 nano
 ubuntu-standard
 vim
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

After this, I ran:
sudo touch /etc/alternatives/editor.ru.UTF-8.1.gz /etc/alternatives/ex.ru.KOI8-R.1.gz

Then the apt-get install -f worked, although I'm not sure if the update-manager had some more plans for the rest of the install or not. update-manager -d doesn't show the upgrade as being available anymore, so I assume it's ok. apt-get dist-upgrade shows no more to be done.

Hope that helps.

[Rog (roger-mindsocket)]

This looks like a dupe of 79320. I've posted some more info there.

[Rog (roger-mindsocket)]

Oops, posted that in the wrong bug, sorry. :p

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for update-manager (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]