Ubuntu

xkb-data install fails on dapper/edgy upgrade

Asked by Franz Amador

I upgraded Dapper to Edgy via

gksu “update-manager -c”

It gave this error message:

    Could not install 'xkb-data'
    failed in buffer_read(fd)

Many following X-related package installs also failed with "dependency problems" messages, which I presume are caused by the original error.

After reboot, X does not start. Using the console, I tried

   sudo apt-get install --reinstall xkb-data

but it fails. The messages include this:

    Setting up xkb-data (0.8-7ubuntu2) ...
    dpkg: error processing xkb-data (--configure):
      failed in buffer_read(fd): md5hash: Input/output error

Trying to reinstall xserver-xorg gives the same message.

Does this mean the xkb-data package is corrupt and thus failing an md5 checksum?

"startx" produces an empty, herringbone-grey screen with a large "X" cursor, i.e. the generic X server.

This renders my system unusable. I have posted this as bug https://launchpad.net/bugs/73863 but got no response. Any help appreciated.

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Franz Amador
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Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey) said : 		#1

Look on the bright side, your machine boots! :)

What happens if you try to do an update and upgrade or dist upgrade again?

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Also, if you still have problems what happens if you manually install xkb-data by doing

sudo dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/xkb-data*

Then reconfigure everything ..

sudo dpkg --configure -a

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Best Franz Amador (fgamador) said : 		#2

You da man! I'm back in business.

The first three apt-get's simply gave the same xkb-data config error as before, but the dpkg -i ran fine. After that, because I was being hasty and didn't read your note again, I did another apt-get dist-upgrade rather than the dpkg --configure. I suspect that had the same effect, because now everything works again - even tux racer, so my nvidia driver is happy.

Should I do the

sudo dpkg --configure -a

still, anyway? Now that things work again, I'm suddenly nervous about breaking things.

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Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey) said : 		#3

If you can run an update/upgrade cycle as above and there are no problems then you don't need to run the dpkg command I gave. For the record that dpkg --configure -a basically tells it to go through attempting to reconfigure every package, so if any have "broken" config it allows you to recreate the config and hopefully fix it.

It's probably not necessary for you now, because the upgrade would have finished off the config of the outstanding packages.