Hardy 8.04 update freezes on generating locales

[mvdberg112]

Yes, I had the problem:

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

just this morning.

First solution was a reboot, and the system came back just fine, but when I tried to install a program called "locate" I got a few errors because apt/dpkg was not consistent. It advised to run:

sudo dpkg --configure -a

This worked, but it hang again on en_AU.UTF-8.
My solution was to swich to the text terminal, and kill that process. (I just forgot the name, but they have the name locale in it.)
Further, I noticed:
-killing some the ...locale... processes did not work.
-a gzip was also running and it seemed to me that that was the last started program. Trying to kill it did not help.

After killing the process, the upgrade process would continue with the next step, but then later on it would try configure the locale again because another package required it (which is correct). Same procedure: kill it from the command line. After that a reboot and again run the dpkg, and this time it was able to configure the locale.

My theory is: during the upgrade process, it uses some software that is already on the system (perhaps gzip or a program that gzip uses), but that piece of software does not work fine with the new 8.04 kernel and packages when it comes to installing the locales. Hence, it hangs. After the upgrade is complete, this piece of bad-software is upgraded to the 8.04 version and works now fine. Hence, the locales reconfiguration runs fine.

Hope this feedback helps the developers.
They have done a great job. Although this little thing concerns me, since I was not able to fix it with the GUI and did not have internet access (Gnome did not work nice and firefox did not start at all during the upgrade process, perhaps another issue; so I could NOT check the forum for help...).
Overall the system is really improved: some CD mounts that did not work, work now. The 'Control Centre' is great.

Wish list for future versions:
1. Parted standard installed in Control Centre
2. Format of CD-RW or DVD-RAM to be used same way as floppy disk in right-mouse button menu of file manager
3. A good Tree view in the file manager or the apple approach (the filemanagers in Linux are great, but all the good options should be combined to make the strongest ever; if I could program I would do it, but I cannot)
4. More tutorial style manual. Sometimes, the manual tells what we can fill in in the options, but I want to know what the options are good for or I am looking for a topical help. Like: how do I use a CD-RW? This might be not just one function, this is a tutorial-topic. I have tried to contribute on this point, but did not find a lot of response.

[falkenberg_cph]

Worked for me. thanks!
/Carsten

That got me to the Gnome logon screen. A normal logon from there would
hang though because of X not being configured completely apparently.
So after another hard reset I succesfully logged into a Gnome Failsafe
session (change the session at the logon screen).

From there I had to

sudo dpkg --configure -a

in a terminal once again which generated those resource files in less
than a second. The rest of the pending packages (including X and the
latest 2.6.24 kernel) installed smoothly as well.

[KennethP]

Thanks Shichuan.

Worked after the second dpkg --configure -a

You made my day!

Ken

[jolmash]

Hello everyone,
I am having the same exact problem, the steps Siberoptik posted worked for me, THANKS SIBEROPTIK!!!!!

[edward4130]

I have the same issue I am past the Locales but get this:

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

this question was aksed but was never resolved, I can do it 40 more times but nothing is changing.Sux since I needed 8.04 for a new application but my machine was running so stable as a myth/ ubuntu box.... now I have a terabyte and a half for useless data since I can't get to a login screen. Someone please help. I built this and made it do many things but this has me stumped.

[stephan0h]

unfortunately many "solutions" fly around for this problem - but the only one that helped me was this one. thanks!

[brainsik]

Alright, I documented this all over the place. I put it on the HardyUpgrades help page, answered someone's "Ubuntu question", and opened a Launchpad bug about this. I can't believe this wasn't documented on the help page.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/update-manager/+bug/258879

Documented everything here:
http://brainsik.theory.org/.:./2008/...upgrade-freeze

Thanks siberoptik!! How did you know to go to the 2.6.22-14 kernel?

[stephan0h]

i googled it, i found it here, and it worked for me. maybe you documented it elswhere - i just didn't find it. sorry.

[Sir Jake]

I'm having this same issue with it hanging at en_US.UTF-8...
Issues is I did this from ssh server is a few hours away so not able to just go down there and boot into grub, is there any steps I could do to fix this from ssh I still have access to my ssh right now.

[EmmaDad]

Just had this problem myself. It seems to be to do with the latest Gutsy kernel version.

These steps worked for me:

1. Reboot your box, and press ESC to enter the GRUB menu
2. Select the previous version of the kernel xxx.14 rather than xxx.15 (sorry I can't recall the exact version numbers) - don't select the fail-safe mode.
3. Log-in as your admin user into recovery mode
4. Manually (re)start the upgrade via a terminal session: dpkg --configure -a

It should complete the install.

Good luck

This basically worked for me with a couple of tweaks...

First, my kernel numbers weren't quite so orderly, my latest was 2.6.22-15 (I think) and so I went to the prior one which was 2.6.20-17 (again, I think). Basically I think the trick is just go down to the second from the top on the grub menu.

After it booted, a GUI login never appeared, but I was able to SSH in and run the dpkg command remotely. It completed, I did a normal reboot and things seem to be ok now.

BTW, my 8.04 upgrade was immediately following a 7.04->7.10 upgrade.

Thanks. (Edited to correct kernel numbers.)