Fixing a broken server update

[Tom H]

On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 12:17 PM, Hal Burgiss <hal at burgiss.net> wrote:
>
> I was recently installing updates to several remote 8.04 servers. The first
> three went fine. The fourth one hung at:
>  Setting up linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-28-server (2.6.24-28.47)
> Which is a bad place. After 30 minutes I hit ctl-c. It seems most of the
> rest of the update went fine. But then it hangs again at:
>  update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-28-server
> Again, ctl-c. Which gets to the end. Now trying to run 'dpkg --configure
> -a', hit hangs indefinitely at:
>  # dpkg --configure -a
>  Setting up initramfs-tools (0.85eubuntu39.3) ...
>  update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
>  Setting up linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-28-server (2.6.24-28.47) ...
> Right now apt is completely broken. It won't do anything until this gets
> fixed. This is a server in use and I am limited what I can do with it. Any
> ideas?

Have you tried to clean out "/var/cache/apt/archives/" and
"/var/cache/apt/archives/partial/" either directly or through
apt-get/aptitude?