Upgrade from Hardy to Ibex using 'pdate-manager -d' breaks update-manager

[allenpd]

Binary package hint: update-manager

After completely updating Hardy, attempted upgrade from Hardy to Ibex using 'update-manager -d', and the upgrade reported that update-manager upgrade failed.

Screenshot of the updater: http://southeastfieros.com/upgrade-fail.png

root@pallen:~# uname -a
Linux pallen.main.analyticfocus.com 2.6.24-22-generic #1 SMP Mon Nov 24 18:32:42 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

root@pallen:~# lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 8.10
Release: 8.10

root@pallen:~# apt-cache policy update-manager
update-manager:
  Installed: 1:0.93.34
  Candidate: 1:0.93.34
  Version table:
 *** 1:0.93.34 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid-updates/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1:0.93.32 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages

ProblemType: Package
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
ErrorMessage: ErrorMessage: SystemError in cache.commit(): E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: update-manager 1:0.93.34
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: update-manager
Title: package update-manager 1:0.93.34 failed to install/upgrade: ErrorMessage: SystemError in cache.commit(): E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-22-generic i686

[Matte Silver (ruf10)]

update-manager has to be run as normal user (I get error if run by sudo/gksu)
but dist-upgrade from /tmp tries to access /var/log/dist-upgrade and that is not allowed by non-root.
So my workaround is to manually run /tmp/$tmpdir/dist-upgrade.py with sudo

[Matte Silver (ruf10)]

sorry, wrong bug

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

2008-12-22 12:14:42,290 ERROR got an error from dpkg for pkg: 'tdsodbc': 'subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1

[allenpd (paul-grandesigns)]

As a follow-up, the upgrade seemed to have succeeded anyway. After a reboot, I was asked to update a bunch of packages, so maybe it was a dependency issue in the initial upgrade? I'm unable to tell much more about it.
-Paul

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and help to improve Ubuntu.

This is a duplicate of bug #254953, which was fixed in freetds 0.82-3ubuntu1.