SRU report follows:
Impact statement: 6.06 users who perform a distribution upgrade to 8.04 may encounter xfonts-scalable failing to upgrade, which halts the distribution upgrade. This upgrade failure may, but is not limited to, leave the X Window System in an unusable state upon restart. The user may work around the upgrade failure in xfonts-scalable by manually upgrading (using dpkg -i) xfonts-utils first and then reattempting the distribution upgrade.
Please note that this issue *only* affects distribution upgrades from 6.06 to 8.04. A distribution upgrade from 7.10 to 8.04 (and later sequences) is not affected, because 7.10 has a sufficiently new xfonts-utils.
Bug fix methodology: Because 8.04's xfonts-scalable package does not have a versioned dependency (only a dependency) on 8.04's xfonts-utils, we must ensure that the version of update-fonts-dir(8) invoked by xfonts-scalable's postrm understands the X11R7 fonts directory semantics. The straightforward manner of accomplishing that task is to add a versioned dependency on 8.04's xfonts-utils to the xfonts-scalable package.
Patch: Given at http://launchpadlibrarian.net/21791957/xfonts-scalable_1.0.0-6ubuntu0.8.04.1.debdiff
Instructions to reproduce the symptom: Perform a distribution upgrade (via network and update-manager/8.04 alternate image) to 8.04 from 6.06. Nondeterministically, xfonts-utils will not be upgraded prior to xfonts-scalable; in this scenario, the distribution upgrade will fail due to the older version of update-fonts-dir remaining.
Regression potential: xfonts-scalable is a dependency of the xorg metapackage and libinventor0. In turn, the xorg metapackage is a dependency of several -client, -frontend, and -desktop metapackages. Because xfonts-utils will be installed prior to xfonts-scalable, none of these metapackages will be affected, and thus, the regression potential is extremely low (negligible).
After validation in hardy-proposed, this package will need to be copied to gutsy-updates, intrepid-updates, and jaunty.
Original bug report follows:
Binary package hint: xfonts-scalable
root@sivaji-desktop:~# apt-get install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 622 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B of archives.
After unpacking 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Setting up xfonts-scalable (1.0.0-6) ...
Invalid string keyword: chassis-type
Valid string keywords are:
bios-vendor
bios-version
bios-release-date
system-manufacturer
system-product-name
system-version
system-serial-number
baseboard-manufacturer
baseboard-product-name
baseboard-version
baseboard-serial-number
baseboard-asset-tag
chassis-manufacturer
chassis-version
chassis-serial-number
chassis-asset-tag
processor-manufacturer
processor-version
usage error: unrecognized option
Usage: update-fonts-dir DIRECTORY ...
update-fonts-dir { -h | --help }
This program is a wrapper for mkfontdir(1x) that is primarily useful to Debian
package maintainer scripts. See update-fonts-dir(8) for more information.
Options:
-h, --help display this usage message and exit
dpkg: error processing xfonts-scalable (--configure):
subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
xfonts-scalable
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
I get the same error trying to upgrade to feisty.