Ubuntu
man-db package

package man-db 2.6.5-2 failed to install/upgrade: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2

Bug #1257691 reported by BG on 2013-12-04

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

This bug affects 1 person

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

Bug Description

Program error after software update.

ProblemType: Package
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
Package: man-db 2.6.5-2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.11.0-13.20-generic 3.11.6
Uname: Linux 3.11.0-13-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.12.5-0ubuntu2.1
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Dec 3 22:05:03 2013
DuplicateSignature: package:man-db:2.6.5-2:subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
ErrorMessage: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-08-17 (109 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Lubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Release i386 (20130423.1)
MarkForUpload: True
SourcePackage: man-db
Title: package man-db 2.6.5-2 failed to install/upgrade: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to saucy on 2013-10-18 (47 days ago)

Tags:

Revision history for this message

BG (writebrad) wrote on 2013-12-04:

AptOrdering.txt Edit (859 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
Dependencies.txt Edit (798 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
Df.txt Edit (450 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
Dmesg.txt Edit (122.8 KiB, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
DpkgHistoryLog.txt Edit (1.8 KiB, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
DpkgTerminalLog.txt Edit (3.8 KiB, text/plain; charset="utf-8")

Apport retracing service (apport) on 2013-12-04

tags:

removed: need-duplicate-check

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.