/etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest don't run due to missing/etc/popularity-contest.conf

[fursten]

Binary package hint: popularity-contest

Anacron mails the following message to root:

/etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest:
.: 17: Can't open /etc/popularity-contest.conf
run-parts: /etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest exited with return code 127

Looking in /etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest it is clear that the culprit is the line
. /etc/popularity-contest.conf

Since /etc/popularity-contest.conf isn't installed the script fails.

Description: Ubuntu 10.10
Release: 10.10

popularity-contest:
  Installerad: 1.48ubuntu1
  Kandidat: 1.48ubuntu1
  Versionstabell:
 *** 1.48ubuntu1 0
        500 http://se.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Neal McBurnett (nealmcb)]

I see the same problem, in maverick, on a System76 lemur "lemu2".

popularity-contest 1.48ubuntu1

As a workaround, it seems to have worked to run `sudo dpkg-reconfigure popularity-contest`

[glance (glance-acc)]

This problem exists on 12.04 cloud images.

popularity-contest should configure to a default state in install.

[glance (glance-acc)]

This problem also affects Precise cloudimg.

It should ether be configured on first boot or at install.

[L-reimann (l-reimann)]

Hi,

same here.

Could someone please assign someone to this bug. It should be fixable in a rather short amount of time and affects lots of users/machines due to usage of Precise cloudimg.

Email Spam ist also unwanted.

Thanks.

[Mark Rose (markrose)]

I would also like to see this fixed. I simply solve it by removing the popularity-contest package.

[Kevin van Zonneveld (kvz)]

For something as trivial as a popularity contest package it is definitely annoying that close to a hundred ec2 servers mail me every morning to inform me that

Cron <root@melida> test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || ( cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily )

/etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest:
/etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest: 18: .: Can't open /etc/popularity-contest.conf
run-parts: /etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest exited with return code 2

[Gabriel Petrovay (gabipetrovay)]

We have the following problem with the popularity-context package that issues an error daily:

/etc/cron.daily/logrotate:
error: error accessing /var/log/upstart: No such file or directory
error: upstart:1 glob failed for /var/log/upstart/*.log
error: found error in /var/log/upstart/*.log , skipping
/etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest:
/etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest: 18: .: Can't open /etc/popularity-contest.conf
run-parts: /etc/cron.daily/popularity-contest exited with return code 2

[Tom Bamford (tombamford)]

apt-get install --reinstall popularity-contest

recreates the missing file on my Precise EC2 instances

[Neil Wilson (neil-aldur)]

A fix has been committed to the automated EC2 build system, so live images generated from now on should hopefully stop triggering this bug.

http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-on-ec2/vmbuilder/automated-ec2-builds/revision/524

[Ben Howard (darkmuggle-deactivatedaccount)]

As Neil said in comment #9, a fix has been put into the buil system (thanks Niel for the fix). I'll spin new cloud images in the next month or so for Oneiric, Precise and Quantal and release them.

[Cd-MaN (panther79)]

For what it's worth: this still happened on a less-than-a-week old EC2 micros instance with with 12.04.1. I'm not sure what the process for getting this fix into the image is (should I have chosen a different image when spinning up the instance?) but I thought I report it.

The fix is (as root):

echo > /etc/popularity-contest.conf
dpkg-reconfigure popularity-contest

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

Since this is an issue with the ec2 image generating scripts deleting the popularity-contest.conf file, and not an issue with the popularity-contest package itself, I am now closing this bug. Upcoming ec2 images will have this problem corrected.