Starting LCDd: invoke-rc.d: initscript LCDd, action "start" failed.

[Jonathan Kaczynski]

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 11.10
Release: 11.10

$ apt-cache policy lcdproc
lcdproc:
  Installed: 0.5.4-6
  Candidate: 0.5.4-6
  Version table:
 *** 0.5.4-6 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

I started an upgrade to oneiric, this weekend. When I returned to my computer, the screen was locked, and I couldn't log back in (my password was not being accepted, seemingly because Num Lock was stuck on), so I rebooted the machine. Then, I tried to perform and update and dist-upgrade. It failed telling me to run a command to continue where it left off. I did so. I rebooted upon completion and tried running update and dist-upgrade, again. It failed to succeed because the lcdproc post-installation script is failing.

Setting up lcdproc (0.5.4-6) ...
Starting LCDd: invoke-rc.d: initscript LCDd, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error processing lcdproc (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1

[Jonathan Kaczynski (jmkacz)]

Trying to manually run "sudo /etc/init.d/LCDd start" results in an exit code of 1.

I added "set -x" to LCDd, and the command that failed was:
    start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --background --exec /usr/sbin/LCDd -- -s 1 -f -c /etc/LCDd.conf

Running the command directly results in an exit code of 1.

$ /usr/sbin/LCDd -s 1 -f -c /etc/LCDd.conf
LCDd 0.5.4, LCDproc Protocol 0.3
Part of the LCDproc suite
Copyright (C) 1998-2010 William Ferrell, Scott Scriven
                        and many other contributors

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.

[Jonathan Kaczynski (jmkacz)]

In a sudo session, I ran "strace /usr/sbin/LCDd -s 1 -f -c /etc/LCDd.conf > /tmp/strace.txt 2>&1". Attached is the output.

[Jonathan Kaczynski (jmkacz)]

The strace output was a red herring. It failed because the the process was running. I can successfully run "/etc/init.d/LCDd stop" and "/etc/init.d/LCDd start".

[Jonathan Kaczynski (jmkacz)]

Going back to the original error, 'Starting LCDd: invoke-rc.d: initscript LCDd, action "start" failed.', I ran '/etc/init.d/LCDd stop' and 'apt-get -f install'. That fixed my issue.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Dominique Dumont (domi-dumont)]

In your LCDd.conf, server/Driver is set to "curses". IIRC, this cannot work when LCDd is run as a daemon (no tenminal available for curses).