package initscripts 2.88dsf-13.10ubuntu11 failed to install/upgrade: ErrorMessage: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1

[Savino Johner]

Problems started when virtalbox stopped booting the oneiric kernel because the ahci module was missing and the root disk could not be mounted (no by-uuid entries in /dev/disk/).

I then downloaded the ubuntu iso again and chrooted into the root partition, installed the update-manager-core and ran a do-release-upgrade and ended up with this bug report.

Do you need to know anything about VM settings or is there something else I forgot to mention?

ProblemType: Package
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: initscripts 2.88dsf-13.10ubuntu11
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-12.20-generic 3.0.4
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-12-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: raid456 async_pq async_xor xor async_memcpy async_raid6_recov raid6_pq async_tx raid1 raid0 vfat fat xfs reiserfs jfs btrfs zlib_deflate libcrc32c virtio_net virtio_pci virtio_ring virtio parport_pc parport nls_utf8 isofs usb_storage vesafb ahci libahci
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat May 12 12:17:52 2012
ErrorMessage: ErrorMessage: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release amd64 (20111011)
SourcePackage: sysvinit
Title: package initscripts 2.88dsf-13.10ubuntu11 failed to install/upgrade: ErrorMessage: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to precise on 2012-05-12 (0 days ago)

[Savino Johner (1-kon)]

Update/Solution:

After submitting this bug report in the middle of a "do-release-upgrade" the upgrade process continued.
I then removed the /var/lock directory, ran apt-get install -f and the initscripts post install script completed without errors.
After this i proceeded to run apt-get update && apt-get upgrade, which resulted in upgrading more packages, but ultimately failing with:

Setting up rsyslog (5.8.6-1ubuntu8) ...
runlevel:/var/run/utmp: No such file or directory
[... lots of more errors due to dependencies ...]

I created /var/run/utmp, chmodded it to 664, changed group to utmp and then the error became:

"Failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused"

Seems like upstart's init requires to be PID 1 and I was still using the rescue busybox shell (which therefore had PID 1)

I rebooted but still ahci was missing because the new kernel (3.2.0-24-virtual) hasn't been installed yet.

So I booted the rescue CD once again, ran apt-get install linux-virtual, it updated the kernel and the initial ramdisk and failed again with the previous errors. But then I was able to boot the new kernel and ahci.ko and the root disk were found.
PID 1 was init and upstart worked again, apt-get install -f installed the remaining packages and completed successfully.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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