[Bug 1523002] Re: dpkg systematically freezes the whole system, can't install anything

[teo1978]

> This is not a dpkg bug, but a (potential) bug in one of the packages
that was being configured.

If a bug in a single package causes dpkg to be unable to install *any*
other package, then there *is* a bug in dpkg, or in some other part of
the package management system.

(btw, there is also a bug in the OS if the whole system stalls beyond
recovery because of a misbehaving program, be it dpkg or the buggy
package)

> Without logs telling us exactly who to blame and how, there's not much
we can do here.

I reported the bug using "ubuntu-bug dpkg".
Correctme if I am wrong: what tells ubuntu-bug which files to include in the report is the package itself, that is, in this case, the dpkg package, right? If so, if some relevant file was not included in this report, something is wrong in the package.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1523002

Title:
  dpkg systematically freezes the whole system, can't install anything

Status in dpkg package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid

Bug description:
  A few days ago, while installing automatic updated (in the
  "background" while doing other stuff, so I didn't know it was because
  of the updates), the whole system froze, that is, stopped responding
  to mouse, keyboard and anything. Not even Ctrl+Alt+F1 would work, so
  the only thing I could do was a hard power off.

  I rebooted and I thought that had been something sporadical, but now I
  wanted to install some package, namely yasm, so I did:

  $ sudo apt-get install yasm

  and the output was:

    E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg
  --configure -a' to correct the problem.

  I ran 'sudo dpkg --configure -a'

  There were a few scary lines in the output regarding grub and linux images (as if it was reinstalling and/or reconfiguring grub for some reason), including:
    killed
    done
  Then after some more lines like "Processing triggers for whatever" it repeated the stuff about grub. It got stuck for several minutes after a message that read something like "Windows loader found at /what/ever" (got stuck meaning it would neither produce any more output nor would it exit to the command line), without consuming any significant amount of cpu.

  Some minutes later, Chrome would only display blank pages, and while I
  was clicking on Google Chrome's window's button to close it, the whole
  system stopped responding again, forcing me once more to power it down
  the "hardware" way.

  I repeated the whole process once more.

  
  So: dpkg is broken, MY WHOLE SYSTEM IS BROKEN and I can't install any packages or system updates.

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.04
  Package: dpkg 1.17.25ubuntu1.1
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.19.0-37.42-generic 3.19.8-ckt9
  Uname: Linux 3.19.0-37-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  ApportVersion: 2.17.2-0ubuntu1.8
  Architecture: amd64
  CurrentDesktop: Unity
  Date: Sat Dec  5 01:07:08 2015
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-10-11 (784 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Release amd64 (20130424)
  SourcePackage: dpkg
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to vivid on 2015-08-15 (111 days ago)

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