Ubuntu
man-db package

package man-db 2.6.1-2 failed to install/upgrade: ErrorMessage: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 255

Bug #1019680 reported by karl bruton on 2012-06-30

This bug report is a duplicate of: Bug #1372673: excessive debconf use when triggered. Edit Remove

This bug affects 2 people

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	man-db (Ubuntu)	Confirmed	Undecided	Unassigned

Bug Description

occured on upgrade to 1204

ProblemType: Package
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: man-db 2.6.1-2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-26.41-generic-pae 3.2.19
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-26-generic-pae i686
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu10
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Jun 30 21:50:16 2012
ErrorMessage: ErrorMessage: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 255
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386 (20101007)
SourcePackage: man-db
Title: package man-db 2.6.1-2 failed to install/upgrade: ErrorMessage: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 255
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-06-30 (0 days ago)

Tags:

Revision history for this message

karl bruton (kgeebe) wrote on 2012-06-30:

Dependencies.txt Edit (653 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
VarLogDistupgradeAptlog.gz Edit (6.4 KiB, application/x-gzip)
VarLogDistupgradeApttermlog.gz Edit (2.2 KiB, application/x-gzip)
VarLogDistupgradeHistorylog.gz Edit (25.2 KiB, application/x-gzip)
VarLogDistupgradeLspcitxt.gz Edit (827 bytes, application/x-gzip)
VarLogDistupgradeMainlog.gz Edit (15.0 KiB, application/x-gzip)
VarLogDistupgradeTermlog.gz Edit (2.5 KiB, application/x-gzip)

Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton) on 2012-07-01

affects:

ubuntu → man-db (Ubuntu)

Revision history for this message

Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote on 2012-07-31:

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

Changed in man-db (Ubuntu):
status:	New → Confirmed

Revision history for this message

Colin Watson (cjwatson) wrote on 2014-09-23:

Thanks for your report. The basic problem here is that man-db's trigger uses debconf to decide whether to update the manual page database, but debconf is not always reliably usable in triggers. I finally figured out a simple way to avoid this problem, which I'm tracking as bug 1372673. If you are still affected by this locally (which I realise is unlikely in the case of some of the older bugs of this type), then running "sudo dpkg --configure -a && sudo apt-get -f install" in a terminal should normally be enough to get the package management system back to a sensible state.