package plymouth (not installed) failed to install/upgrade: conflicting packages - not installing plymouth

[ZeroMaster]

bug on "do-release-upgrade"

ProblemType: Package
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: plymouth (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.2.0-35.40-generic 4.2.8-ckt5
Uname: Linux 4.2.0-35-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.19.1-0ubuntu5
Architecture: i386
Date: Sun Apr 24 15:01:57 2016
DuplicateSignature: package:plymouth:(not installed):conflicting packages - not installing plymouth
ErrorMessage: conflicting packages - not installing plymouth
RelatedPackageVersions:
 dpkg 1.18.2ubuntu5.1
 apt 1.0.10.2ubuntu2
SourcePackage: plymouth
Title: package plymouth (not installed) failed to install/upgrade: conflicting packages - not installing plymouth
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to xenial on 2016-04-24 (0 days ago)

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

The error in your log is:

Selecting previously unselected package plymouth.
dpkg: regarding .../plymouth_0.9.2-3ubuntu13_i386.deb containing plymouth:
 plymouth conflicts with console-common
  console-common (version 0.7.88) is present and installed.

dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/plymouth_0.9.2-3ubuntu13_i386.deb (--unpack):
 conflicting packages - not installing plymouth

This is correct, plymouth does conflict with console-common; this is not an accident.

The question is, why did the package manager not remove console-common in order to let plymouth be installed? Later on in your DpkgHistory.txt, we see that console-common *is* being removed. So this looks like a package manager bug for not correctly removing the package earlier.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

This is very likely fixed in 1.3, as that got a whole lot of reworking in that area (and thus not backportable). If it pops up again with 1.3, please reopen the bug or report a new one.