package tomcat8 8.0.32-1ubuntu1.5 failed to install/upgrade: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1

[nickwins]

Trying to restart the server after adding a user via NetBeans - failed. Tried restarting service - failed. Tried reinstalling tomcat8 package - failed to start service.

ProblemType: Package
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: tomcat8 8.0.32-1ubuntu1.5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.13.0-36.40~16.04.1-generic 4.13.13
Uname: Linux 4.13.0-36-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.15
AptOrdering:
 tomcat8: Install
 tomcat8: Configure
 NULL: ConfigurePending
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Feb 27 21:11:49 2018
ErrorMessage: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-01-03 (55 days ago)
InstallationMedia: budgie-remix 16.04.2 "Budgie-remix" - amd64 (20170217)
PackageArchitecture: all
RelatedPackageVersions:
 dpkg 1.18.4ubuntu1.3
 apt 1.2.25
SourcePackage: tomcat8
Title: package tomcat8 8.0.32-1ubuntu1.5 failed to install/upgrade: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
mtime.conffile..etc.tomcat8.tomcat-users.xml: 2018-02-27T21:02:52.839617
mtime.conffile..etc.tomcat8.web.xml: 2018-02-27T21:07:20.184441

[nickwins (nickwins-3)]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!--
  Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more
  contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with
  this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership.
  The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0
  (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with
  the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

  Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
  distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
  WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
  See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
  limitations under the License.
-->
<tomcat-users xmlns="http://tomcat.apache.org/xml" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" version="1.0" xsi:schemaLocation="http://tomcat.apache.org/xml tomcat-users.xsd">
    <!--
  NOTE: By default, no user is included in the "manager-gui" role required
  to operate the "/manager/html" web application. If you wish to use this app,
  you must define such a user - the username and password are arbitrary.
-->
    <!--
  NOTE: The sample user and role entries below are wrapped in a comment
  and thus are ignored when reading this file. Do not forget to remove
  <!.. ..> that surrounds them.
-->
    <!--
  <role rolename="tomcat"/>
  <role rolename="role1"/>
  <user username="tomcat" password="tomcat" roles="tomcat"/>
  <user username="both" password="tomcat" roles="tomcat,role1"/>
  <user username="role1" password="tomcat" roles="role1"/>
-->
    <user password="<redacted>" roles="manager-script,admin" username="nick"/>
</tomcat-users>

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

I don't know how your config change broke the configuration from the logs.
But that is what then breaks the update/reinstall.

For a service to be upgraded it needs to be restarted.
If you want to start from scratch you have to "apt remove --purge ..." which will wipe any configuration. Otherwise you have to fix up your local config as apt/dpkg will not erase it without being asked to do so.

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better.

On upgrading a service this service has to be restarted to pick up the fixes.
Rather rarely a real issue occurs that the newer version does e.g. fail with the formerly working configuration.
But most of the time what happens is, that a service was installed, but stays unconfigured or experimented with but left in a broken state.

Now on any update of the related packages that service has to be restarted, but since its config is incomplete/faulty it fails to restart.
Therefore the update of that package has to consider itself incomplete.

Depending on your particular case there are two solutions:
- either remove the offending package if you don't want to continue using it.
- Or if you do want to keep it please fix the configuration so that re-starting the service will work.

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.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for tomcat8 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]