12.04.03 64bit will not update procps, package update fail

Please try the various solution procedures in the following thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2181086

tried
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2181086
Re: procps blues
    Fixed. I opened /etc/sysctl.d/10-zeropage.conf and changed vm.mmap_min_addr = 65536 to 65535

that did not work for me

also tried

grep kernel.yama.ptrace_scope /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf
and find
/etc/sysctl.d/10-ptrace.conf:kernel.yama.ptrace_scope = 1
sudo leafpad /etc/sysctl.d/10-ptrace.conf
and comment it out

neither solution worked

actually those solution created even more errors

...
Setting up procps (1:3.2.8-11ubuntu6.1) ...
start: Job failed to start
invoke-rc.d: initscript procps, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error processing procps (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of apport-gtk:
 apport-gtk depends on procps; however:
  Package procps is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing apport-gtk (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.
                          Errors were encountered while processing:
 procps
 apport-gtk

Hi. It seems, that this problem is widely described, sometimes with solutions. Anyway, I think, that you could take a look on /var/log/upstart/procps.log file to find errors etc. Or during running a 'cat /etc/sysctl.d/*.conf /etc/sysctl.conf | sudo sysctl -p -' command. An example of error found in procps.log file;

,-----[ tail /var/log/upstart/procps.log ]
| (...)
| error: permission denied on key 'kernel.kptr_restrict'
| (...)
`-----

As we can see there is one error. So I think you could try to comment out 'kernel.kptr_restrict = 1' option from /etc/sysctl.d/10-kernel-hardening.conf file. I see that there is a lot of reported bugs related to procps etc. You can always try to reinstall procps or apport-gtk packages, right? Maybe you have some PPA repos? Try to disable and update once again.]

Best regards.

I suggest you report a bug

@Andrew: there is already a confirmed bugreport for this:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/procps/+bug/1241376

I do not think it is a bug but an implementation problem with PPAs,
in my case SpiderOak

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/procps/+bug/1241376

One should check all .conf files under
/etc/sysctl.d
and make sure each file has a new line before EOF
my problem was with
/30-spideroak.conf

I am unable to file a bug report with spideroak at this time.

Thanks Galen Thurber (godfree2), your solution fixed it for me.

After adding a new line to /30-spideroak.conf I was able to update without errors.

 /30-spideroak.conf was also a problem for me. There was a newline before EOF, but I had to change fs.inotify.max_user_watches from 65536 to 65535, and then was able to install procps.

The following line in /etc/sysctl.conf was causing this same problem for me:

kernel.printk="7 4 1 7"

error: "Invalid argument" setting key "kernel.printk" in /var/log/upstart/procps.log

I removed quotes from it and it fixed the problem.