[Bug 349469] Re: debconf: DbDriver "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by another process: Resource temporarily unavailable

[Clint Byrum]

Excerpts from Thomas Hood's message of Wed Mar 21 21:12:53 UTC 2012:
> There is no shortage of duplicates of this report.  I am inclined to
> guess that in many cases faulty package scripts are leaving processes
> around which fail to release the config.dat lock under some
> circumstances.
> 
> In order to test this hypothesis I'd like to go back in time and in each
> of the 400-odd cases find the rogue process and then figure out why it's
> running on the user's system. Obviously that's impossible.  But perhaps
> we will have chances to do this in the future.
> 
> I certainly don't think that the *majority* of cases has arisen from a
> package management command being run from a terminal while another
> package management process runs.  I was just asking in #30 whether or
> not there are higher-level locks that should be taken by such commands,
> resulting in earlier and more useful error messages.  It seems not.  In
> that case I'd say that for now the error message ("debconf: DbDriver
> "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by another process:
> Resource temporarily unavailable") should be extended to give some
> advice about how to fix the problem... and possibly also to ask for
> information to be contributed here.
> 

Perhaps an apport bug pattern could be written which would look for what
processes are holding the locks?

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/349469

Title:
  debconf: DbDriver "config": /var/cache/debconf/config.dat is locked by
  another process: Resource temporarily unavailable

Status in “debconf” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  If you have encountered this bug, please run:

    sudo fuser /var/cache/debconf/config.dat

  for each of the shown process IDs, please run:

    pstree -s $pid

  and report the output to this bug.

  Binary package hint: cups

  Crash detection report attached.

  ProblemType: Package
  Architecture: i386
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
  ErrorMessage: subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  Package: cups 1.3.9-2ubuntu8
  SourcePackage: cups
  Title: package cups 1.3.9-2ubuntu8 failed to install/upgrade: subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1
  Uname: Linux 2.6.27-11-generic i686

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