Comment 66 for bug 349469

Hopefully another data point: I accidentally started an install of the "ppm" package using "sudo apt-get install ppm" (I had the wrong package name), and it appeared to try to install kexec-tools. It hung during setup of kexec-tools (similar to http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1214718.html), so I interrupted the process. After this, I could not get pending set-up to finish because /var/cache/debconf/config.dat was locked, like so:

~% pstree -alps 8300
init,1
  └─aptd,3060 /usr/sbin/aptd
      └─dpkg,3098 --status-fd 14 --configure -a --force-confdef --force-confold
          └─frontend,8300 -w /usr/share/debconf/frontend /var/lib/dpkg/info/kexec-tools.postinst configure 1:2.0.2-1ubuntu4
              └─kexec-tools.pos,8303 /var/lib/dpkg/info/kexec-tools.postinst configure 1:2.0.2-1ubuntu4
                  └─update-grub,8313 /usr/sbin/update-grub

I was able to kill -kill 8313 (update-grub), then clean up as suggested in this bug.

~% lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS
Release: 12.04