package zfsutils-linux 0.8.1-1ubuntu14 failed to install/upgrade: installed zfsutils-linux package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1

[Aaron]

Did an upgrade from 19.04 to 19.10. Eventually ran into the error:

Errors were encountered while processing:
 zfsutils-linux
 zfs-zed
Exception during pm.DoInstall(): E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Before I hit this error I had run into a failure in starting the service to mount ZFS filesystems due to an error about my mount point that uses ZFS not being empty. Not sure if this is relevant for the main issue though.

ProblemType: Package
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 19.10
Package: zfsutils-linux 0.8.1-1ubuntu14
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.0.0-32.34-generic 5.0.21
Uname: Linux 5.0.0-32-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu8
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Oct 17 23:26:25 2019
ErrorMessage: installed zfsutils-linux package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-02-26 (963 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 16.04.2 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20170215.8)
Python3Details: /usr/bin/python3.7, Python 3.7.5rc1, python3-minimal, 3.7.5-1
PythonDetails: /usr/bin/python2.7, Python 2.7.17rc1, python-minimal, 2.7.17-1
RelatedPackageVersions:
 dpkg 1.19.7ubuntu2
 apt 1.9.4
SourcePackage: zfs-linux
Title: package zfsutils-linux 0.8.1-1ubuntu14 failed to install/upgrade: installed zfsutils-linux package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to eoan on 2019-10-18 (0 days ago)

[Aaron (aaronjwood)]

Note that I was able to recover from this by doing a sudo dpkg --configure -a which then prompted me about what to do for my existing zfs-zed package. I still got an error in the end indicating that there were failures during the process but my system seemed stable. A quick reboot later cat /sys/module/zfs/version shows 0.8.1-1ubuntu12 and all seems to be well...so far :)

[Aaron (aaronjwood)]

I take that last part back. The zfs-mount service is failing to start. I believe I know what caused this whole scenario:

1. I'm running containers on my host, specifically using Docker
2. Many of the containers have volume mounts out to different data sets within my pool
3. It looks like either Docker was not stopped when I started the 19.10 upgrade or it was started up too soon during the upgrade. When all of my data sets were unmounted there were some containers up and running happily writing bits of data into some of the data sets
4. zfs-mount service fails indicating that the mount point is not empty

What I did to remedy this was to go into my mount point and wipe everything out that was there. In my case there were directories created from the container volume mounts, as well as some files within them from some of the applications coming up and writings logs/config (but then crashing as everything else was missing). After the cleanup of the mount point I could start the zfs-mount service successfully, I saw all of my data sets get mounted, and everything is generally working now.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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