Bug#771971: dpkg hangs installing "init" during upgrade from wheezy to jessie

[Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com>]

Package: upgrade-reports
Severity: serious

Hi,

Doing and upgrade in a VM. Started from a fairly minimal wheezy
system, then ran apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade to do the
upgrade. Things appeared to be running smoothly, until dpkg hung at
this point:

...
Unpacking libsepol1:amd64 (2.3-2) over (2.1.4-3) ...
Setting up libsepol1:amd64 (2.3-2) ...
Selecting previously unselected package sysvinit-core.
(Reading database ... 37825 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../sysvinit-core_2.88dsf-58_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking sysvinit-core (2.88dsf-58) ...
Replacing files in old package sysvinit (2.88dsf-41+deb7u1) ...
Setting up sysvinit-core (2.88dsf-58) ...
sysvinit: restarting... done.
Selecting previously unselected package init.

I've no idea what it's stuck on. Usefully, I took a complete backup of
this VM image before I started so I can start the entire upgrade again
to help debug this if desired...