Following discussions with Kees, I am convinced that there is a bug here. He has managed to get his system into this state:
* triggers/Deferred exists
* triggers/update-initramfs does not
* initramfs-tools interested in update-initramfs is installed
Looking at the log it seems clear that the new update-initramfs was unpacked before the new dpkg was run. Therefore the transitional activation didn't run or didn't work, or the call to dpkg-trigger from update-initramfs created Deferred (which it shouldn't, obviously).
Following discussions with Kees, I am convinced that there is a bug here. He has managed to get his system into this state: update- initramfs does not
* triggers/Deferred exists
* triggers/
* initramfs-tools interested in update-initramfs is installed
Looking at the log it seems clear that the new update-initramfs was unpacked before the new dpkg was run. Therefore the transitional activation didn't run or didn't work, or the call to dpkg-trigger from update-initramfs created Deferred (which it shouldn't, obviously).