System Update froze - UbuntuMATE 16-04

[Bret Busby]

On 20/06/2018, Bret Busby <bret.busby at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 20/06/2018, Sarunas Burdulis <sarunas at math.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>> On 2018-06-19 15:04, Bret Busby wrote:
>> [...]
>>> Now, I do not know how many hours this
>>>
>>> update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.4.0-127-generic
>>>
>>> step is supposed to take, but I think something is wrong there.
>>
>> It may take a while, depending on a system. I have seen it take up to 20
>> min. on some very low RAM cloud instances (even then there are
>> informative messages given), but you seem to have plenty of RAM.
>>
>> I don't know what's the root of the problem in your case. You may have
>> to investigate, whether the process is actually doing something (disk
>> activity, resource usage), attache to it via strace -p <processID>, etc.
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Sarunas Burdulis
>> Systems Administrator, Dartmouth Mathematics
>> math.dartmouth.edu/~sarunas
>>
>>
>
> It has now been running (or, frozen) for more than an hour.
>
> Running strace -p <pid> returns
> "wait4(1, "
>
>

"
root at bret-Inspiron-580-UbuntuMATE:/home/bret# ps -ax | grep initramfs
 2692 pts/1    S+     0:00 grep --color=auto initramfs
29029 pts/7    Ss+    0:00 /usr/bin/dpkg --status-fd 57 --configure
initramfs-tools:all
29034 pts/7    S+     0:00 /bin/sh
/var/lib/dpkg/info/initramfs-tools.postinst triggered update-initramfs
29035 pts/7    S+     0:00 /bin/sh /usr/sbin/update-initramfs -u
root at bret-Inspiron-580-UbuntuMATE:/home/bret# strace -p 29034
strace: Process 29034 attached
wait4(-1,
"

"
root at bret-Inspiron-580-UbuntuMATE:/home/bret# ps -ax | grep initramfs
 2692 pts/1    S+     0:00 grep --color=auto initramfs
29029 pts/7    Ss+    0:00 /usr/bin/dpkg --status-fd 57 --configure
initramfs-tools:all
29034 pts/7    S+     0:00 /bin/sh
/var/lib/dpkg/info/initramfs-tools.postinst triggered update-initramfs
29035 pts/7    S+     0:00 /bin/sh /usr/sbin/update-initramfs -u
root at bret-Inspiron-580-UbuntuMATE:/home/bret# strace -p 29034
strace: Process 29034 attached
wait4(-1, ^Cstrace: Process 29034 detached
 <detached ...>
root at bret-Inspiron-580-UbuntuMATE:/home/bret# strace -p 29035
strace: Process 29035 attached
wait4(-1,
"

-- 

Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia

..............

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
 you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
 Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
 "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
 A Trilogy In Four Parts",
 written by Douglas Adams,
 published by Pan Books, 1992

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