Aha! What appears to be happening is that the installer erroneously sets up /var/cache/debconf/config.dat with mode 0600, so it's unreadable to the user-mode debconf frontend, which falls over and leaves the root debconf proxy without anything to talk to; it then crashes shortly afterwards and we're left with this horrendous mess to try to debug. This explains Amael's comment #8, and other comments indicating that this goes away after the first upgrade.
I can fix this in the installer, but of course that only applies for future releases. For current releases, we have pretty limited options here. The only way we can push out code to fix the permissions is to release a package to -updates that does it, but in this case the user- mode debconf frontend is started up (and fails) before we install any packages, so that's likely to be ineffective. After some discussion on #ubuntu-devel, it seems that the least bad of the available options is to write a wiki page documenting the problem and a workaround (and probably also documenting the similar problem in bug 500175, since I don't think we can tell the two problems apart automatically - I've just gone through several dozen of the duplicate bug reports and I'm not even sure I can tell them apart manually), and cause people with this problem to be redirected to that bug report rather than filing a new bug. This should go some way towards explaining what's going on, and things should be fixed up on their next upgrade in any case. We'll then make sure that initial installations of Oneiric won't have this bug. ** Also affects: ubiquity (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided Status: New ** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided => High ** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu) Status: New => In Progress ** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu) Assignee: (unassigned) => Colin Watson (cjwatson) ** Also affects: debconf (Ubuntu Lucid) Importance: Undecided Status: New ** Also affects: tzdata (Ubuntu Lucid) Importance: Undecided Status: New ** Also affects: ubiquity (Ubuntu Lucid) Importance: Undecided Status: New ** Also affects: debconf (Ubuntu Maverick) Importance: Undecided Status: New ** Also affects: tzdata (Ubuntu Maverick) Importance: Undecided Status: New ** Also affects: ubiquity (Ubuntu Maverick) Importance: Undecided Status: New ** Also affects: debconf (Ubuntu Natty) Importance: Undecided Status: New ** Also affects: tzdata (Ubuntu Natty) Importance: Undecided Status: New ** Also affects: ubiquity (Ubuntu Natty) Importance: Undecided Status: New ** Also affects: debconf (Ubuntu Oneiric) Importance: High Assignee: Colin Watson (cjwatson) Status: Confirmed ** Also affects: tzdata (Ubuntu Oneiric) Importance: Medium Status: Confirmed ** Also affects: ubiquity (Ubuntu Oneiric) Importance: High Assignee: Colin Watson (cjwatson) Status: In Progress ** Changed in: debconf (Ubuntu Lucid) Status: New => Invalid ** Changed in: debconf (Ubuntu Maverick) Status: New => Invalid ** Changed in: debconf (Ubuntu Natty) Status: New => Invalid ** Changed in: tzdata (Ubuntu Lucid) Status: New => Invalid ** Changed in: tzdata (Ubuntu Maverick) Status: New => Invalid ** Changed in: tzdata (Ubuntu Natty) Status: New => Invalid ** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu Lucid) Importance: Undecided => High ** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu Lucid) Status: New => Triaged ** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu Lucid) Milestone: None => ubuntu-10.04.3 ** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu Lucid) Assignee: (unassigned) => Colin Watson (cjwatson) ** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu Maverick) Importance: Undecided => Medium ** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu Maverick) Status: New => Triaged ** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu Maverick) Assignee: (unassigned) => Colin Watson (cjwatson) ** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu Natty) Importance: Undecided => Medium ** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu Natty) Status: New => Triaged ** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu Natty) Assignee: (unassigned) => Colin Watson (cjwatson) ** Changed in: ubiquity (Ubuntu Oneiric) Milestone: None => oneiric-alpha-3 ** Changed in: debconf (Ubuntu Oneiric) Status: Confirmed => Invalid ** Changed in: tzdata (Ubuntu Oneiric) Status: Confirmed => Invalid -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/442941 Title: debconf failed to upgrade from 1.5.27ubuntu1 to 1.5.27ubuntu2: exit status 128 - Use of uninitialized value $reply in scalar chomp at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/FrontEnd/Passthrough.pm line 66 To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/debconf/+bug/442941/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs