initctl failing with unhandled dbus error

[Jeremy Yoder]

Upgrading from 10.04 to 12.04 I noticed a lot of package install failures. All of them share this error:

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initctl: Method "Get" with signature "ss" on interface "org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" doesn't exist

initctl:dbus_error.c:69: Unhandled error from nih_dbus_error_raise: Method "Get" with signature "ss" on interface "org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" doesn't exist

Aborted
--------------

I can reproduce this error just by trying to run an upstart-converted start script:
$ /etc/init.d/ssh start

The error appears to trace to here in /lib/init/upstart-job:

--------------
+ initctl show-config+ -e ssh
grep -q ^ start on
initctl: Method "Get" with signature "ss" on interface "org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" doesn't exist

initctl:dbus_error.c:69: Unhandled error from nih_dbus_error_raise: Method "Get" with signature "ss" on interface "org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" doesn't exist

Aborted
--------------

I can run initctl show-config by hand and I get the error too:
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$ initctl show-config
mountall-net
initctl: Method "Get" with signature "ss" on interface "org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" doesn't exist

initctl:dbus_error.c:69: Unhandled error from nih_dbus_error_raise: Method "Get" with signature "ss" on interface "org.freedesktop.DBus.Properties" doesn't exist

Aborted
--------------

So far I can't tell if this is affecting anything negatively since I haven't rebooted yet.

[Jeremy Yoder (jyoder)]

The answer is yes, it completely messed up a whole bunch of things. I manually managed to get to a working state but I most likely need to do a fresh install at this point.

Because one of the packages that failed was initramfs-tools, and because I apparently had casper installed (courtesy of remastersys, which I used to create a backup before I upgraded) it's possible this bug is related to bug #984276

[James Hunt (jamesodhunt)]

@Jeremy - thank you for reporting this issue and helping to make Ubuntu better.

The problem you have seen with 'initctl' should not cause the upgrade to fail, however it will stop services that were running prior to the upgrade to be automatically started *as part of the upgrade*. In other words, a reboot will result in your system running the latest version of Upstart and the problem will be resolved.

To restart ssh in your example, simply use the native Upstart method rather than the SystemV "helper":

  restart ssh

It does indeed sound like the problems on your system are primarily caused by having casper installed.

[Emgee (eking-x)]

I just had the exact same error...

My Fix:
- edit init config file
- find "console log" and change to "console output"

Start job, works

Hope it helps