Upgrading upstart, while running it, freezes the system

[Alexandre Vassalotti]

I tried to upgrade `upstart' on my Edgy system, but when it started to install the new configuration files, the system totally froze. Not just Xorg, the whole thing. I had to manually power off my laptop.

Then, because `upstart' configuration was broken, I had to fix it by running ``dpkg --configure -a''. After that, everything was alright.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

Could you confirm one thing for me ...

Were you already running an earlier version of upstart, or were you running the ordinary sysvinit?

[Alexandre Vassalotti (avassalotti)]

I was running upstart-0.1-2 (if I remember correctly) when I tried to upgrade it to the lastest version. (upstart-0.2)

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

Ok, thanks; I had a hunch that was the case.

The older version of upstart responded to the TERM signal by happily leaving the main loop and exiting. Obviously the kernel isn't too happy about init going away, so would have issued a PANIC, which is why your machine froze.

The newer version uses TERM to mean "re-exec yourself", and the postinst sends this signal ... which is why your machine PANIC'd on upgrade.

[Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott)]

Trivially fixed by not sending SIGTERM unless we're upgrading from a version of upstart that actually supports that.

Thanks.