Ubuntu

can't install xfonts-scalable when upgrading to Hardy amd64

Asked by Ryan Finnin Day

I am in the middle of an upgrade from Dapper to Hardy on an amd64 machine. The upgrade failed in the middle due to an error with the xfonts-scalable package. I tried several things to get the package to reinstall or remove or install, but never got out of the half-installed state. I eventually made hand-edits to /var/lib/dpkg/status to remove the entry for xfonts-scalable. That seemed to work, but when I tried to reinstall it, it failed again. Here is what that last procedure looked like:

root@weasel:/usr/share/fonts# cd /var/lib/dpkg/
root@weasel:/var/lib/dpkg# ls
alternatives cmethopt info parts status updates
available diversions lock statoverride status-old
available-old diversions-old methods statoverride-old triggers
root@weasel:/var/lib/dpkg# vi status
root@weasel:/var/lib/dpkg# dpkg --purge xfonts-scalable
dpkg - warning: ignoring request to remove xfonts-scalable which isn't installed.

root@weasel:/var/lib/dpkg# apt-get install xfonts-scalable
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Suggested packages:
  xfs xserver
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  xfonts-scalable
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 517 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/342kB of archives.
After unpacking 635kB of additional disk space will be used.
Selecting previously deselected package xfonts-scalable.
(Reading database ... 145388 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking xfonts-scalable (from .../xfonts-scalable_1%3a1.0.0-6_all.deb) ...
Setting up xfonts-scalable (1:1.0.0-6) ...
usage error: unrecognized option
Usage: update-fonts-dir DIRECTORY ...
       update-fonts-dir { -h | --help }
This program is a wrapper for mkfontdir(1x) that is primarily useful to Debian
package maintainer scripts. See update-fonts-dir(8) for more information.
Options:
    -h, --help display this usage message and exitdpkg: error processing xfonts-scalable (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 2
Errors were encountered while processing:
 xfonts-scalable
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

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Ryan Finnin Day
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Ryan Finnin Day (rday) said : 		#1

After I ran into the aforementioned problems with doing a network upgrade to Hardy (update-manager -d), I decided to download the alternate install CD for Hardy amd64 and use that. The download was quick and the resulting file had a matching md5sum. But, I was immediately stumped by this problem:

root@weasel:/media/cdrom0# sh ./cdromupgrade
tar: ./dists/stable/main/dist-upgrader/binary-all//hardy.tar.gz: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors
Could not find the upgrade application in the archive, exiting

The error appears to be a lie. The file hardy.tar.gz does exist where it should on the CD:

root@weasel:/media/cdrom0/dists/stable/main/dist-upgrader/binary-all# ls -l
total 672
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 687228 Apr 22 00:30 hardy.tar.gz
-r--r--r-- 1 root root 191 Apr 22 01:12 hardy.tar.gz.gpg

So I gave up on a smooth upgrade and used the alternate install CD to do an install on top of Dapper without formatting my disks. So there is some cruft now, but I have a working Hardy and I was able to keep my user data. I just have to reinstall the applications I need to get a fully operational server again.