Hardy 8.04 update freezes on generating locales

[ubuntal]

I just attempted to update to Hardy 8.04 and everything went fine until the "Generating locales" portion, at which point the process froze. It displays this:

Generating locales...
en_AU.UTF-8...

Same here. Just went "ps -fe |grep locale" and then "kill -9" the locale-gen process.

Had to do this five or six times, and the killed processes went zombie, still consuming the CPU time, but the upgrade finished OK even though quite slowly.

After the reboot went

sudo localedef --no-archive -i en_AU -c -f UTF-8 en_AU.UTF-8

which fixed the locale.

[flower71]

Thanks for the info, that was much faster than rebooting and running the dpkg command again! We just killed the offending process each time it came up (about 13 times) and finally made it through the install.

[rednamer]

I tried the suggested fix and booted the .14 kernel, ran dpkg, and it worked and upgraded to 8.04. However, it still does not log in, and when I try to run dpkg again, it outputs a bunch of lines, followed by this:

dpkg: too many errors, stopping
dpkg: ../../src/packages.c:251: process_queue: Assertion `!queuelen' failed.

I waited a long while before upgrading to Hardy - you would think bugs like this would be worked out by now. Why are so many people having trouble upgrading and no solutions to fix this?

I have this same exact problem. Can't seem to get past it no matter what I try suggested in this thread.

When I go to login screen I get "Authentication failed" -popup immediately after entering my user name. The same also comes from a console, "Login failed" immediately after entering the user name. Obviously I should get 'dpkg --configure -a' to finish in order to get things done.

I'm now downloading an installation CD, hopefully it can clean up this mess. Any other suggestions on fixing this issue are highly appreciated.

[pbhill]

Having the exact same problem. Is there a real fix for Hardy or should I just reinstall Feisty (which was fine)? I don't understand any of the gobbledygook above... How about some help for non-technical folks?

[ubuntal]

I don't understand any of the gobbledygook above... How about some help for non-technical folks?

The moment the install freezes, run the terminal (Start menu - Accessories - Terminal). A window should pop up showing something like this

ubuntal@machine:~$

Enter "top" and press Enter (this step is optional, just for you to see what's going on inside the box).

ubuntal@machine:~$ top

You should see a localedef process at the top, consuming the CPU at about 99%. You should kill it.

To quit the top list, just click the "q" button. Now you need to find out the localedef's id.

In the terminal window enter

ubuntal@machine:~$ ps -fe | grep locale

You should see something like this

ubuntal@machine:~$ ps -fe | grep locale

root      17061  15634  0 11:21 ?     00:01:14 localedef some-options-here...
root      15634  1      1 11:20 ?     00:02:29 locale-gen some-options-here...

This means that the upgrade is executing locale-gen, and locale-gen is executing localedef. To kill the bad process, enter (note: in your case the number will be different, just enter your number instead of 15634)

ubuntal@machine:~$ sudo kill -9 15634

The update should now continue. If it freezes again, kill locale-gen again (the number will again be different).

Then after the upgrade and restart, open a terminal window and enter

ubuntal@machine:~$ sudo localedef --no-archive -i en_AU -c -f UTF-8 en_AU.UTF-8

In your case it's probably en_US instead of en_AU. To check it's been fixed, go

ubuntal@machine:~$ locale
LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_AU.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

ubuntal@machine:~$ exit

Hope this makes sense.

[jules98]

Hi all,

I have the same problem. With "pstree" I see that the hanging process is "gzip":

hardy(24415)
+dpkg(8598)
+language-suppor(26213)
+install-languag(26218)
+locale-gen(26219)
+locale-gen(26232)
+localedef(26261)
+gzip(26262)

May that help to trouble shoot...

BR, Jacques-D.

[thesurgeon]

Your a star Ubuntal. I have been trying to fix this for a few days now and had to reinstall to 7.04, then upgrade via the internet for 2 hours and again up to 8.04. This is deffinetly the fix for this bug. I have tried all the other posts and other pages and this is the only one that deffinetly works. Thanks an endless amount.

[pbhill]

I am anxious to try Ubuntal's fix, but can't get Ubuntu to boot... all I get is a screen with vertical lines. I've tried safe mode, etc. Do I have to start from scratch and reinstall Gutsy Gibbon or Feisty? (I now have two computers down with this problem, and have had to resort to XP!) Why did I think I should upgrade when all was well?

[pbhill]

OK, now I've tried Ubuntal's fix on the second machine. I can at least boot into Ubuntu on that one. I get a message saying that HAL has failed to initialize. I go through the steps as outlined by Ubuntal, but after killing locale-gen, it get the message "Unable to resolve host Ubuntu"

bhill@Ubuntu:~$ ps -fe | grep locale
root 4218 1 0 17:30 ? 00:00:00 /sbin/mount.ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/sda1 -o rw,locale=en_US.utf8
root 5707 5705 0 17:31 pts/0 00:00:00 /bin/sh -e /var/lib/dpkg/info/locales.postinst configure 2.6.1-1
root 5708 5707 0 17:31 pts/0 00:00:00 /bin/sh /usr/sbin/locale-gen
root 5722 5708 0 17:31 pts/0 00:00:00 /bin/sh /usr/sbin/locale-gen
root 5751 5722 99 17:31 pts/0 00:01:09 localedef --no-archive --magic=20051014 -i en_AU -c -f UTF-8 en_AU.UTF-8
pbhill 5773 5753 0 17:33 pts/1 00:00:00 grep locale
pbhill@Ubuntu:~$ sudo kill -9 5751
sudo: unable to resolve host Ubuntu
[sudo] password for pbhill:
pbhill@Ubuntu:~$

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

[Gargoth]

OK, now I've tried Ubuntal's fix on the second machine. I can at least boot into Ubuntu on that one. I get a message saying that HAL has failed to initialize. I go through the steps as outlined by Ubuntal, but after killing locale-gen, it get the message "Unable to resolve host Ubuntu"

bhill@Ubuntu:~$ ps -fe | grep locale
root 4218 1 0 17:30 ? 00:00:00 /sbin/mount.ntfs-3g /dev/sda1 /media/sda1 -o rw,locale=en_US.utf8
root 5707 5705 0 17:31 pts/0 00:00:00 /bin/sh -e /var/lib/dpkg/info/locales.postinst configure 2.6.1-1
root 5708 5707 0 17:31 pts/0 00:00:00 /bin/sh /usr/sbin/locale-gen
root 5722 5708 0 17:31 pts/0 00:00:00 /bin/sh /usr/sbin/locale-gen
root 5751 5722 99 17:31 pts/0 00:01:09 localedef --no-archive --magic=20051014 -i en_AU -c -f UTF-8 en_AU.UTF-8
pbhill 5773 5753 0 17:33 pts/1 00:00:00 grep locale
pbhill@Ubuntu:~$ sudo kill -9 5751
sudo: unable to resolve host Ubuntu
[sudo] password for pbhill:
pbhill@Ubuntu:~$

Any ideas? Thanks in advance!

You killed the wrong process, you should be killing the locale-gen. in the case of your example it would be sudo kill -9 5722