Ubuntu
man-db package

package man-db 2.5.7-2ubuntu1 failed to install/upgrade: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 255

Bug #717928 reported by genniii on 2011-02-12

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

Binary package hint: man-db

automatic update packages came in, apparently one failed to load properly. I am not a programmer person and could not figure out how to redo. I do not know what a man-db is. Googling or reading the 10.04 manual never helped me to comprehend since I dont understand most of the language
I am not sure this is a bug
I am clueless what the failure to install upgrade will do to affect my system
I expected what is sent in automatic updates to load
apparently it didnt and my computer asked me to send the error report

ProblemType: Package
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: man-db 2.5.7-2ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-28.55-generic 2.6.32.27+drm33.12
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-28-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Feb 12 14:01:15 2011
ErrorMessage: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 255
SourcePackage: man-db
Title: package man-db 2.5.7-2ubuntu1 failed to install/upgrade: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 255

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Revision history for this message

genniii (genntri) wrote on 2011-02-12:

AptOrdering.txt Edit (317 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
Dependencies.txt Edit (809 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
Df.txt Edit (450 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
Dmesg.txt Edit (39.4 KiB, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
DpkgTerminalLog.txt Edit (23.2 KiB, text/plain; charset="utf-8")

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.