[Bug 979661] Re: oneiric to precise: debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Gnome and falls back to Dialog

[Colin Watson]

I believe that this may be specific to amd64 at this point in time.  The
problem is that libpango1.0-0 is upgraded quite early, and it Depends:
libc6 (>= 2.14) on amd64 (but only >= 2.4 on other architectures).  When
libpango1.0-0 has been unpacked, 'use Gtk2;' fails:

Can't load '/usr/lib/perl5/auto/Pango/Pango.so' for module Pango: /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.14' not found (required by /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpango-1.0.so.0) at /usr/lib/perl/5.12/DynaLoader.pm line 192.
 at /usr/lib/perl5/Gtk2.pm line 31
Compilation failed in require at /usr/lib/perl5/Gtk2.pm line 31.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/lib/perl5/Gtk2.pm line 31.
Compilation failed in require.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted.

Now, there's something else wrong, because the log shows the Gnome
frontend failing to load even after the new libc6 has been unpacked.  I
think I'm along the right lines here, though.

I have a suspicion that fixing bug 850264 may work around this in
practice; the unsatisfied pre-dependency while trying to unpack libnih1
points to a problem in apt, and fixing that might well force libc6 to be
unpacked earlier and hence avoid this problem.  I wouldn't mind some
confirmation of that, though.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/979661

Title:
  oneiric to precise: debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Gnome and
  falls back to Dialog

Status in “update-manager” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  I was doing an upgrade from Oneiric to Precise and the machine hung in
  the process. There was a dialog somewhere in the background that I
  didn't see:

  debconf: unable to initialize frontend: Gnome
  debconf: (Unable to load Gtk -- is libgtk2-perl installed?)
  debconf: falling back to frontend: Dialog

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