various packages show as installed, but files are not present

[xennex82]

It appears that Ubiquity removes various packages as the final step of the installation. It appears to do this in two phases however: first it deletes the files they contain, and then in the second phase it updates the dpkg status database to indicate they are no longer installed. The second phase is not performed if grub fails to install, leaving the target system with packages marked as installed, but missing their files. This should not happen.

Packages this effects include dmraid, libgtkmm ( which in turn breaks gparted, as it depends on that library ), and cifs-utils. There are probably more.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

I have seen this happen with libgtkmm as well. From what I can tell, it seems to happen when the installer fails to install grub at the end, and then I have to manually install grub to get the system to boot. Did this happen to you? Can you attach your /var/log/installer files?

[xennex82 (xennex82)]

I never imagined that it could be this.

On both Installs I used a custom setup in which I had my system directly on disk in a PV which means I had to manually install Grub using a patched Grub. I believe the installer does not allow to not install Grub, so I direct it at /dev/sda (for instance) and it will fail using the regular grub, of course.

I mean that the regular grub will fail. Then I install grub manually.

So yes, you are right on the money here. I have no installer log anymore (?). But I think it should be clear enough already :).

Well, perhaps not. But. Oh wait, it's on another /var.... Not there either. I will have to redo the install some time to find out. Other system.... Also nothing, I assume it gets wiped? Maybe it never gets created.

The regular Grub will produce this error message on my system:

/usr/sbin/grub-install: error: disk `lvmid/bn8p8J-Wr6M-Qzel-E0t8-8yOV-PbQN-TgKc6P/3Xl0mm-8loM-TcZ2-7pki-oF2S-MSEt-oBcPGT' not found.

Which is a bit weird, I thought it would bug out on /dev/sda. But anyway, regular patched grub will say:

Installation finished. No error reported.

That's currently a git version (from Savannah) but the same for the Supplied Ubuntu version. Anyway, that's irrelevant.

I indeed have a failing grub at install ;-). Regards.

[xennex82 (xennex82)]

It happened again on an install of 16.04.3.

Ubiquity leaves behind no installer log on the installed system so again I do not have any sorry.

I would have to reinstall somewhere sometime and ensure that grub fails. In principle that's easy enough.

[xennex82 (xennex82)]

Here is the list of packages that have incomplete files:

btrfs-tools
casper
cifs-utils
dmraid
fcitx-frontend-all
fcitx-frontend-gtk2
fcitx-frontend-gtk3
fcitx-frontend-qt4
fcitx-frontend-qt5
fcitx-module-cloudpinyin
fcitx-module-dbus
fcitx-module-kimpanel
fcitx-module-lua
fcitx-module-x11
fcitx-pinyin
fcitx-table
fcitx-ui-classic
jfsutils
kde-config-fcitx
kpartx
kpartx-boot
libdmraid1.0.0.rc16
libfcitx-gclient0
libfcitx-qt0
libfcitx-qt5-1
libgeoclue0
libjavascriptcoregtk-4.0-18
liblua5.2-0
libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37
libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37-gtk2
linux-image-4.10.0-28-generic
linux-signed-generic-hwe-16.04
linux-signed-image-4.10.0-28-generic
linux-signed-image-generic-hwe-16.04
lupin-casper
mokutil
presage
python3-cupshelpers
reiserfsprogs
ubiquity-slideshow-kubuntu
user-setup
xfsprogs
zenity
zenity-common

As you can see many of these (or most of these) would get removed after install. So the problem is more that this package removal doesn't happen.