Comment 6 for bug 468915

Following the jaunty->karmic upgrade (via Update Manager), I used the Synaptic GUI to reinstall (failed), then remove completely and reinstall (also failed). I used the GUI Computer Janitor to remove all suggested packages (took several iterations as once some were gone others were suggested). I then tried again with Synaptic to install (gpsd was already gone from a previous remove completely, as was the /etc/default/gpsd file). This also failed.

I just tried:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get purge gpsd gpsd-clients
sudo apt-get install gpsd gpsd-clients

and got the same failure:
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  gpsd gpsd-clients
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/200kB of archives.
After this operation, 561kB of additional disk space will be used.
Preconfiguring packages ...
Selecting previously deselected package gpsd.
(Reading database ... 180905 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking gpsd (from .../archives/gpsd_2.39-5_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package gpsd-clients.
Unpacking gpsd-clients (from .../gpsd-clients_2.39-5_i386.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Processing triggers for sreadahead ...
Processing triggers for menu ...
Setting up gpsd (2.39-5) ...
 * Starting GPS (Global Positioning System) daemon gpsd [fail]
invoke-rc.d: initscript gpsd, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error processing gpsd (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Setting up gpsd-clients (2.39-5) ...

Processing triggers for menu ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 gpsd
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Hope this helps.