[SRU] package gconf2 3.2.6-3ubuntu6 failed to install/upgrade: dependency problems - leaving triggers unprocessed

[Franck]

[Impact]

During system upgrades, triggers for gconf2 might activate too early, while some of its dependencies aren't configured yet. This happens several times in a loop and stops the upgrade in the end.

The attached debdiffs fix this issue by changing interest to interest-noawait in debian/gconf2.triggers file. The triggers will now activate near the end of upgrade.

In addition, the debdiff for Bionic also contains a fix for FTBFS (bug 1834211).

[Test Case]

Triggers for gconf2 are usually activated on changes in /usr/share/GConf/gsettings folder, so the main Ubuntu edition (with GNOME) is most suitable for reproducing the issue. To reproduce it, install that edition, apply all updates, then try upgrading to the next release.

[Regression Potential]

None, interest-noawait trigger is known to work well in other packages (comment 31).

[Other Info]

Even if Cosmic goes EOL next month, the fix for it might be worth it for release upgrades.

[Original Description]

When upgrading from 15.10 to 16.04Beta (2016-03-01), this error occured, alongside many others related to systemd and gnome.
Notice that despite all warnings and errors, finally, the system remained functional.

ProblemType: Package
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: gconf2 3.2.6-3ubuntu6
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-8.23-generic 4.4.2
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-8-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Mar 1 09:21:15 2016
ErrorMessage: dependency problems - leaving triggers unprocessed
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-10-04 (148 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 15.10 "Wily Werewolf" - Alpha amd64 (20151002)
RelatedPackageVersions:
 dpkg 1.18.4ubuntu1
 apt 1.2.3
SourcePackage: gconf
Title: package gconf2 3.2.6-3ubuntu6 failed to install/upgrade: dependency problems - leaving triggers unprocessed
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to xenial on 2016-03-01 (0 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[zottelbeyer (klaus-steinhauer)]

came across this when doing "update-manager -d" .

a crash file is created but the error window pops up again instantly and console output shows:
ERROR: Cannot create report: [Errno 17] File exists: '/var/crash/gconf2.0.crash'

the upgrade halts at Unpacking colord-data and does not seem to continue.

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

Just happened to me. It hangs the entire upgrade and it is impossible to continue. The only thing you can do is to hard shut down the computer, and notice it no longer boots.

Trying to fix packages in any form does not fix the problem.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

It'd be helpful to have log files from the upgrade, which are located in /var/log/dist-upgrade/, to figure out what went wrong.

[zottelbeyer (klaus-steinhauer)]

For some reason my update was able to resume after uploading the crash file and closing some more error windows.
I've attached the logs in a tar as they are quite big. let me know if this helps or you need any additional information.

[Michel Tissier (michel-tissier)]

Updating from 15.10 to 16.04 final and I've got the same error and a lot of others (log file attached). But I think there is a link with the primary (this one).

At the final step (1 hour later), the updating process said that because of errors, he will try to re-install the 15.10 ;-( But finally, this is the 16.04 which is running ???

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

term.log was empty.

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apt-term.log shows that the problem was libxml2 and python3 dependencies not configured before doing on gconf2.

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

apt-term.log shows this is exactly the same error for Michel Tissier.

On the other hand Franck and Zottelbeyer only experience this with the python3 dependency, but not with libxml2. So that is why the system is still functional for them after the upgrade.

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

The root cause could be bug #1565115.

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

Also bug #1527980 for libxml2.

[Alberto Salvia Novella (es20490446e)]

With you permission I am now repairing my broken system, so I will not be able to provide any further log from it.

I am also unsubscribing from this report, but if you think there is something I needed to know please feel free to subscribe me again.

[Apologiz (apolog1z)]

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get remove ubuntu-desktop
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

[Maketsi (maketsi)]

I had this same problem, and managed to pass through it by furiously closing down those error windows manually during the upgrade process. It kept popping new ones up at least 50 times, and continued then normally.
When all the packages were upgraded, it finally popped up an error saying that some steps were not done and "the system may be in unstable state", without giving any kind of guidance on what to do next.

Manual 'apt-get upgrade' or 'apt-get dist-upgrade' didn't give any errors or packages to upgrade, so I just rebooted. System seems to work normally after reboot. I had to manually run 'apt-get autoremove' to get rid of unused packages.

# apt-get upgrade gconf2
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
gconf2 is already the newest version (3.2.6-3ubuntu6).
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

[crisper (scarnes)]

I had the exact same experiences as Maketsi

[hackel (hackel)]

Just go this upgrading from 16.04 to 16.10. I had to dismiss 51 (!!!) identical dialogues about this failure during the upgrade before it finally quit entirely. It seems to have finished, though, and my system is up to date and stable so far.

[Michael Alexander (ftmichael)]

I had almost exactly the same as Maketsi (comment 22) just now in my upgrade from 16.04 to 16.10, with the one difference that my gconf2 is a newer version than theirs and mine is set to manually installed (not sure why). Same experience as hackel (comment 24) too, in that I rebooted (although upgrader had crashed and didn't tell me to reboot, so I wasn't even sure if it was stable enough to reboot) and everything is apparently up to date and stable.

# sudo apt upgrade gconf2
[sudo] password for michael:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
gconf2 is already the newest version (3.2.6-3ubuntu7).
gconf2 set to manually installed.
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

[Joel Parke (joelparke)]

I had the same issue with upgrading from 16.04 to 16.10. and I too had to dismiss MANY identical dialogues about this failure!! I almost power cycled... but kept going.. waiting for upgrade to complete.... PLEASE fix - or at least don't have an endless cycle of error messages....

[alexis (grissino)]

same issue exactly from 16.04 to 16.10
here come my log files too.

[Nicholaus Shupe (nicholaus-shupe)]

Completely broke my 16.04 to 16.10 upgrade. Really bad. Thankfully I backed the VM up.

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

gconf2 broke my 18.04 -> 18.10 upgrade with

     dpkg: dependency problems prevent processing triggers for gconf2:
      gconf2 priklauso nuo psmisc; tačiau:
       Paketas psmisc dar nekonfigūruotas.

     dpkg: klaida, apdorojant paketą gconf2 (--configure):
      dependency problems - leaving triggers unprocessed

in a loop until dpkg gave up.

Perhaps this is another instance of bug 1780996?

[Colan Schwartz (colan)]

Confirming that this is still happening in later releases. I just marked these as duplicates, but we can unmark them if the same underlying issue isn't at play here (as suggested in the above comment).

bug #1778342
bug #1791529
bug #1805051

[Vlad Orlov (monsta)]

This is similar to what happened in the past with:

- dbus (https://bugs.debian.org/771989)
- cracklib-runtime (https://bugs.debian.org/854554)
- shared-mime-info (https://bugs.debian.org/864953)

It can be fixed the same way as those. I'll post the debdiffs with the fixes later.

[Vlad Orlov (monsta)]

Fix for 19.04

[Vlad Orlov (monsta)]

Fix for 18.10

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

The attachment "Debdiff with the fix for Disco" seems to be a debdiff. The ubuntu-sponsors team has been subscribed to the bug report so that they can review and hopefully sponsor the debdiff. If the attachment isn't a patch, please remove the "patch" flag from the attachment, remove the "patch" tag, and if you are member of the ~ubuntu-sponsors, unsubscribe the team.

[This is an automated message performed by a Launchpad user owned by ~brian-murray, for any issue please contact him.]

[Vlad Orlov (monsta)]

For 18.04, a build fix is required first (bug 1834211).

[Vlad Orlov (monsta)]

Fix for 18.04 + build fix (bug 1834211)

this can go into bionic-proposed in one diff

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Thanks for working on this and preparing the debdiffs. Has the debian package changed from interest to interest-noawait? Is there a bug in debian regarding this issue?

[Vlad Orlov (monsta)]

No, Debian package doesn't have this change. As for the bug reports, I only found a mention of this issue in a report for dpkg: https://bugs.debian.org/774794

[Vlad Orlov (monsta)]

It could be that Debian won't need this change. Looks like all the triggers are now processed near the end of upgrade, due to changes in dpkg itself.

Possibly related entry from dpkg 1.19.3 changelog:

  * dpkg: Introduce a new dependency try level for trigger processing. This
    completely defers trigger processing until after the dependency cycle
    breaking level, so to avoid generating artificial trigger cycles, when we
    end up trying to process triggers with yet unsatisifiable dependencies.
    Closes: #810724, #854478, #911620

https://bugs.debian.org/810724

And from dpkg 1.19.7 changelog:

  * dpkg: Split the trigger dependtry into two, the second of which will be
    the one checking trigger cycles when deferring trigger processing due to
    unsatisfiable dependencies. Closes: #928429

https://bugs.debian.org/928429

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

For the record our plan is to backport the trigger processing fixes and that work is being tracked in bug 1828639.

[Vlad Orlov (monsta)]

Oh, nice. Maybe then gconf patches won't be needed. (Still need to fix FTBFS in Bionic, bug 1834211.)

[Iain Lane (laney)]

Given comment #40 and the fixed dpkg, we're going to decline the rls nomination for eoan. It's possible/probable that those patches are right anyway - please could you submit them ideally via a merge request on salsa.debian.org?

[Vlad Orlov (monsta)]

Sorry, completely forgot about it... :-/

So bug 1828639 is now fixed. I guess no need to fix gconf triggers now?

[Ori Avtalion (salty-horse)]

I'm seeing the "Could not install 'gconf2'" error during upgrade from 19.10 to the 20.04 beta.

The crash reports says the error is "dependency problems - leaving triggers unprocessed"

[kkivi (kkivi)]

19.10->20.04 the same thing.
It is happened not to be a loop but a series of identical messages from
different packages. I package name should be included int the messages,
to help user better understand the issue

[Dan Streetman (ddstreet)]

Whew, this is a long bug.

So given comment 40 indicating part of this bug has been fixed in bug 1828639, and comment 42 indicating the any remaining patches should be sent to debian, it seems to me that the ubuntu-sponsors team does not need to be subscribed to this, as it's unclear what parts, if any of the attached patches still apply. Unsubscribing ubuntu-sponsors.

[guysoft (guysoft)]

Getting this in 21.04
When I close the dialog with "close" It pops right back again and the upgrade is stuck.