Comment 0 for bug 6976

Package: debhelper
Version: 4.2.12
Severity: grave
File: /usr/bin/dh_gconf
Justification: renders packages uninstallable

dh_gconf generates postinst fragments that contain the line

 kill -HUP `pidof gconfd-2`

If gconfd-2 is not running when the postinst executes, this command
will fail, causing the postinst to abort. Suggest instead the construct

 if gconfd_pid=`pidof gconfd-2`; then
  kill -HUP $gconfd_pid
 fi

(tested to work correctly when gconfd is not running, using both bash
and dash.) I'm calling this a grave bug because it renders packages
uninstallable, albeit not the debhelper package.

I encountered this problem with the gnome-session package; it should be
fixed quickly before the bad code propagates to more packages.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.7
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US

Versions of packages debhelper depends on:
ii binutils 2.14.90.0.7-8 The GNU assembler, linker and bina
ii coreutils [fileutils] 5.0.91-2 The GNU core utilities
ii debconf-utils 1.4.29 debconf utilities
ii dpkg-dev 1.10.22 Package building tools for Debian
ii file 4.09-1 Determines file type using "magic"
ii html2text 1.3.2a-1 An advanced HTML to text converter
ii perl 5.8.4-2 Larry Wall's Practical Extraction
ii po-debconf 0.8.12 Manage translated Debconf template

-- no debconf information