Re: Debconf broken

[Thomas Hood <jdthood@yahoo.co.uk>]

"Tille, Andreas" <TilleA@rki.de> wrote:

> I observed that all my intents to install/deinstall
> packages using dpkg or apt-get are frozen at a certain
> state.  A `ps ax` showed the following example call:
>
>   /usr/bin/perl -w /usr/share/debconf/frontend
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/apt-listchanges.postrm purge

I had the same problem recently with the postrm in one of my
own packages.  I solved it by putting a "db_stop" command at the
end of the postrm.

Here is the comment, from /usr/share/doc/debconf-doc/tutorial.html
(in the debconf-doc package), which led me to do this:

--------------------------------------------------------
Troubleshooting

   A few things can commonly go wrong when you convert
   something over to debconf:
     * Your postinst uses debconf and starts a daemon that
       doesn't close all inherited file descriptors (all
       such daemons are buggy, really). This makes debconf
       hang, because the debconf frontend waits for the
       daemon to close the fd's before continuing. Note
       that if you use confmodule, the program probably
       needs to close fd's 0, 1, 2, and 3.
       To fix:
          + Redirect fd's to /dev/null before running the
            daemon
          + Or fix the daemon.
          + Or call the "stop" command at the end of your
            postinst, to let the frontend know you're done.
--------------------------------------------------------

In my case I am calling update-devfsd to restart the devfsd.
I reported this situation to the devfsd maintainer, who
is looking into the problem.

HTH

--
Thomas Hood


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