[Bug 221269] Re: Selecting "start a new shell to examine..." then closing the shell caused update to freeze

[Maarten Bezemer]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make
Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to
look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many
changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem
may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if
you could test it on a currently supported Ubuntu version. When you test
it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running
apport-collect 221269 and any other logs that are relevant for this
particular issue.

** Changed in: update-manager (Ubuntu)
       Status: Confirmed => Incomplete

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/221269

Title:
  Selecting "start a new shell to examine..." then closing the shell
  caused update to freeze

Status in “update-manager” package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  This bug was started by an automated bug reporting thing.  I'm not
  100% sure what happened, as this was during an upgrade from Gutsy to
  Hardy and a lot was going on.

  At some point during the upgrade, a dialog box popped up asking what I
  wanted to do about dovecot.conf.  I chose to view the differences and
  determined that I wanted to do a manual merge.  After hitting Next, it
  took me back to the list of options.  Since there is no "manually
  merge the files" option, I chose "start a new shell to examine the
  situation".  It dropped me into a root shell inside the embedded
  terminal in the distribution upgrade application with no instructions
  (nothing like "Edit /tmp/dovecot.conf.new to your liking, then exit
  the shell.").  Not knowing what I should do, I hit Ctrl-D to log out
  of the shell.  At this point, both the distribution upgrade
  application and debconf were frozen.  The distribution upgrade
  application was still redrawing when something would obscure the
  window and then move away, but debconf did not redraw.

  I got to a terminal, did 'ps -ef' and looked around for what might be
  happening.  This is what I remember seeing, which could be wrong:  The
  distribution upgrade application had a child process:  debconf.  The
  debconf process had its own child process:  ucf.  The ucf process said
  "<defunct>" next to it in the 'ps -ef' output.  I tried 'sudo kill -9
  <pid_of_defunct_ucf>' but nothing happened.  I then killed the debconf
  process and the upgrade app sprang back to life saying that something
  had exited with an error.  I hit OK and the upgrade continued as if no
  problem had occurred.

  At the very end of the upgrade, an automated bug reporting thing
  popped up.  Actually, three bug reporting dialog boxes popped up:  one
  for dovecot ("package dovecot-common 1:1.0.10-1ubuntu5 failed to
  install/upgrade: "), one for update-manager ("package update-manager
  1:0.87.24 failed to install/upgrade: ErrorMessage: SystemError in
  cache.commit(): E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code
  (1)"), and one for nautilus ("nautilus crashed with SIGSEGV").  After
  clicking "report" for all three, I got the following message in a
  dialog box:  "Could not install the upgrades.  The upgrade aborts now.
  Your system could be in an unusable state.  A recovery will run now
  (dpkg --configure -a)."  I hit OK and the distribution upgrade app
  closed.

  ProblemType: Package
  Architecture: i386
  Date: Wed Apr 23 22:54:38 2008
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
  ErrorMessage:
   ErrorMessage: subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 143
  NonfreeKernelModules: openafs nvidia
  Package: dovecot-common 1:1.0.10-1ubuntu5
  PackageArchitecture: i386
  SourcePackage: dovecot
  Title: package dovecot-common 1:1.0.10-1ubuntu5 failed to install/upgrade: 
  Uname: Linux 2.6.22-14-generic i686

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