insserv: Starting tomcat depends on plymouth and therefore on system facility `$all' which can not be true!

[Anisatun Nafi'ah]

can't install open ssh server complete

ProblemType: Package
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: openssh-server 1:7.2p2-4ubuntu2.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-51.72-generic 4.4.30
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-51-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.1
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Dec 2 10:41:57 2016
ErrorMessage: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-11-21 (11 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20160719)
RelatedPackageVersions:
 dpkg 1.18.4ubuntu1.1
 apt 1.2.15
SourcePackage: openssh
Title: package openssh-server 1:7.2p2-4ubuntu2.1 failed to install/upgrade: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Hi,
thank you for reporting the bug and your help to make Ubuntu better.

It is not actually an ssh issue, but only triggered while upgrading ssh when it tries to insert its init script.
In the log I found:
insserv: There is a loop between service tomcat and dns-clean if started
insserv: There is a loop between service tomcat and mountkernfs if started
insserv: There is a loop between service plymouth and urandom if started
insserv: There is a loop between service tomcat and udev if started

I've seen that more in a tomcat context so I'll reassign there - this seems to be the "common denominator":
insserv: Starting tomcat depends on plymouth and therefore on system facility `$all' which can not be true!

That eventually stops your ssh update/install at:
  update-rc.d: error: insserv rejected the script header
  dpkg: error processing package openssh-server (--configure)

At least some of theses issues I've seen where related to custom extra software being installed confusing the dependencies - do you happen do know if you have any of the listed sevrices tweaked or installed from a non archive source?

I installed openssh-server, tomcat7, plymouth and they worked (tomcat by default needs a config, but I didn't hit your issue).
I couldn't find dns-clean what package is that from?

Since it seems likely to me that this is a local configuration problem, rather than a bug in Ubuntu, I'm marking this bug as Incomplete.

If indeed this is a local configuration problem, you can find pointers to get help for this sort of problem here: http://www.ubuntu.com/support/community

Or if you believe that this is really a bug, then you may find it helpful to read "How to report bugs effectively" http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html. We'd be grateful if you would then provide a more complete description of the problem, explain why you believe this is a bug in Ubuntu rather than a problem specific to your system, and then change the bug status back to New.

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

I've again encountered more of these so I'm convinced there really is some issue around tomcat/plymouth causing this as I'm not willing to assume that so much people out there manually modified these init scripts (which happened in the past and were the reasons to not consider this too much so far).

I'll try to dup a few more bugs onto this one hoping that I find more of them and we should try to discuss, analyze and fix it on this one as the center for these discussions.

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

I couldn't find more, but I'm sure there were at least 2-5 - duping when I find them.

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

That discussion is actually good about the general background: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/289667/unable-to-install-anything-using-apt-get-because-of-insserv

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

It might be useful to get the following collections of the affected systems:
sudo dpkg --audit
dpkg --verify tomcat7
dpdk --verify plymouth
ls -l /etc/rc*/tomcat
ls -l /etc/rc*/plymouth
ls -l /etc/init.d/tomcat
ls -l /etc/plymouth/tomcat

and to check the LSB headers of these:
cat /etc/init.d/tomcat
cat /etc/init.d/plymouth

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Even with several reports dupped onto here, we never got as far as understanding the details.
To reflect that I'll mark incomplete for now to properly reflect this.

If you are affected please check comment #6 and try to report these - we might even need multiple of them to get what is going on.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Is this perhaps a dupe to lp #1828639?