automatic dpkg --configure -a

[Scott Ritchie]

Gianmarco Leone wrote:
> Hi all,
> I had a little idea that could be trivial to implement, and I don't see
> any drawback in implementing it. When you interrupt a package manager
> (apt-get or synaptic) you have to manually run "dpkg --configure -a" to
> make thing clean again (you complete the installation/upgrade process of
> the packages). My idea is to automatically run it at boot. If everything
> is ok, it doesn't do anything, else he complete the broken process at
> boot without the need to run manually the command in a terminal. USE
> CASE: abnormal termination of dpkg causated by a power failure or a
> discharged battery.
> Ciao,
> Gianmarco
> 

This can also happen due to running out of disk space on the /
partition.  This is a very plausible scenario, and it's especially
annoying since you can't run apt-get autoclean to free up disk space
until you run dpkg --configure -a

We may not want to wait for a reboot here.  Just integrate it into the
update manager if it detects dpkg --configure -a still needs to be run.

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie