Re: Upgrade problem: "dpkg: 'x' not found on PATH"
On Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 01:44:09PM +0200, Nick De Graeve wrote:
> I'm trying to upgrade a Sarge box to Etch and several "dpkg: `x' not
> found on PATH"-errors occured.
>
> I followed the instructions in the release notes
> (http://www.nl.debian.org/releases/etch/i386/release-notes/ch-
> upgrading.en.html):
>
> I ran
>
> # aptitude upgrade
> # aptitude install initrd-tools
> # aptitude install libfam0 xlibmesa-glu
>
> When I ran the last command I noticed these errors:
>
> [...]
> Fetched 892kB in 2s (363kB/s)
> dpkg: `ldconfig' not found on PATH.
> dpkg: `start-stop-daemon' not found on PATH.
> dpkg: `install-info' not found on PATH.
> dpkg: `update-rc.d' not found on PATH.
> dpkg: 4 expected program(s) not found on PATH.
> NB: root's PATH should usually contain /usr/local/sbin, /usr/sbin and /
> sbin.
> E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)
> Ack! Something bad happened while installing packages. Trying to
> recover:
> dpkg: `ldconfig' not found on PATH.
> dpkg: `start-stop-daemon' not found on PATH.
> dpkg: `install-info' not found on PATH.
> dpkg: `update-rc.d' not found on PATH.
> dpkg: 4 expected program(s) not found on PATH.
> NB: root's PATH should usually contain /usr/local/sbin, /usr/sbin and /
> sbin.
> [...]
>
> I checked and indeed, /sbin/ and /usr/sbin/ weren't in root's PATH
> variable. (I fixed that now)
>
> I suspected that these messages appeared in the previous commands too
> and indeed, with the upgrade of initrd-tools it had similar errors.
> For the 1st command I couldn't find the console output anymore but I
> fear the worst.
>
> What should I do?
First, confirm that the commands that weren't in the path are at least
on the box. Then, ensuring that the paths are correct, I would run
aptitude interactivly (text-based UI, not CLI) (perhaps after reading
the aptitude manual if you haven't already) and see if it says that
anything is broken.
Then, still from the UI, do an update. See if there are any broken
packages (couted, if any, in the second line header), then search for
unconfigured packages (anything but a plain 'i' in the flag field).
Once everything _appears_ correct, then do some serious testing.
As always, ensure that you have good backups.
Read the installation manual and if things don't work out rather
quickly, do a full reinstall.
My first upgrade from Sarge to Etch failed (died while updating libc6)
and it was easier to reinstall. Since then, I've just reinstalled; it
only takes 20 minutes or so.
Doug.
Reply to: