upgrade aborts: errors encountered while processing amavisd-new

[Krishna E. Bera]

console transcript follows below.
this was during a text console network-based upgrade from 6.06 to 8.04
after this, i apt-get remove'd amavisd-new
then removed the file /etc/fstab.pre-uuid
then ran dpkg --configure -a
then apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade
and it seems to be done

transcript ----------------------------->

Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-16-server
Errors were encountered while processing:
 amavisd-new

Could not install the upgrades

The upgrade aborts now. Your system could be in an unusable state. A
recovery will run now (dpkg --configure -a).

Please report this bug against the 'update-manager' package and
include the files in /var/log/dist-upgrade/ in the bugreport.
E:Sub-process /tmp/tmpe_dHbI/backports/usr/bin/dpkg returned an error
code (1)

Setting up amavisd-new (1:2.5.3-1ubuntu3) ...
Creating/updating amavis user account...
Broken amavis system user found. To insure data-safety,
it is up to you the local administrator to remove the broken
amavis user, or repair it so that it is sane
dpkg: error processing amavisd-new (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 amavisd-new
/etc/fstab.pre-uuid already exists
remove this file before running the script again

Could not install the upgrades

The upgrade aborts now. Your system could be in an unusable state. A
recovery will run now (dpkg --configure -a).

Please report this bug against the 'update-manager' package and
include the files in /var/log/dist-upgrade/ in the bugreport.
installArchives() failed

Setting up amavisd-new (1:2.5.3-1ubuntu3) ...
Creating/updating amavis user account...
Broken amavis system user found. To insure data-safety,
it is up to you the local administrator to remove the broken
amavis user, or repair it so that it is sane
dpkg: error processing amavisd-new (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 amavisd-new
/etc/fstab.pre-uuid already exists
remove this file before running the script again

[Sergiu Bivol (sergiu-bivol)]

Actually, the "amavisd-new" package is broken.
I am trying to install amavis on my mail server and it keeps complaining that the user "amavis" exists already:
-------------
Se despachetează amavisd-new (din .../amavisd-new_1%3a2.5.3-1ubuntu3_all.deb) ...
Se pregătește amavisd-new (1:2.5.3-1ubuntu3) ...
Creating/updating amavis user account...
Broken amavis system user found. To insure data-safety,
it is up to you the local administrator to remove the broken
amavis user, or repair it so that it is sane
---------------

Well, the user "amavis" is created during the installation of "amavisd-new". This is a stupid situation.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

I think the package that is broken is the Dapper one. It does some odd (to me anyway) over-riding in the postinst. I think that all you can do is follow the instructions given and remove the old amavis user:

sudo deluser amavis

I'm guessing that once you've done that, the upgrade will proceed.

[Sergiu Bivol (sergiu-bivol)]

@Scott: Deleting the user has no effect.
Have a look at ./DEBIAN/postinst in the amavis package:
-----------
# Sanity-checks (see #367807)
if [ ! -d "${homedir}" ] ; then
  echo "Broken amavis system user found. To insure data-safety," >&2
  echo "it is up to you the local administrator to remove the broken" >&2
  echo "amavis user, or repair it so that it is sane" >&2
  exit 1
fi
-------------
We identify the error message that me and Krishna encountered. The problem is that user "amavis" does not have its home directory.

Creating the directory /var/lib/amavis and setting the right permissions does the trick – I have already tested it on my server.
But this is not the Ubuntu way, right? So please somebody fix this strange behavior of amavis.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

What permissions did you set? I'll see what I can do to fix it.

Sorry about that. When I tested it locally, that seemed to solve it.

The Dapper amavisd-new package has some real oddities due to it trying to inherit users from amavis, amavis-ng, and amavisd-new transparently.

[Sergiu Bivol (sergiu-bivol)]

Directory: /var/lib/amavis
User: amavis
Group: amavis
Permissions: 755

In my case, amavis didn't want to install (I did not try to upgrade, but it should be similar).

Creating the directory was not everything I did:
Because I have already tried to install amavis once, the install command should (probably) look like "$ sudo apt-get install -f " (but I am not sure about that since I did it through aptitude).

The error message displayed by amavis is not adequate: if it fails to find /var/lib/amavis, it should say so in a message like "Please check that ${homedir} exists and has the right permissions".

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreport.

This is a problem with the amavisd-new package, I reassign and close the update-manager task.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Only an issue for Dapper -> Hardy updates. Marking Fix Released for Intrepid. Should be nominated for Hardy when Bug 249434 is fixed.

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

Hardy has seen the end of its life and is no longer receiving any updates. Marking the Hardy task for this ticket as "Won't Fix".