Comment 62 for bug 637947

updating alsa-utils in a ssh console will generate the errors I see i.e.:
$ sudo apt-get install alsa-utils
...
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 148 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,107kB of archives.
After this operation, 4,096B of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ maverick-updates/main alsa-utils armel 1.0.23-2ubuntu3.4 [1,107kB]
Fetched 1,107kB in 11s (97.8kB/s)
(Reading database ... 166815 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace alsa-utils 1.0.23-2ubuntu3 (using .../alsa-utils_1.0.23-2ubuntu3.4_armel.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement alsa-utils ...
Processing triggers for ureadahead ...
ureadahead will be reprofiled on next reboot
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up alsa-utils (1.0.23-2ubuntu3.4) ...
No protocol specified
xcb_connection_has_error() returned true
Home directory /home/ubuntu not ours.

If I do the same thing in a console on the board, the installation goes fine.