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

[Colin Watson]

On Fri, May 04, 2012 at 06:07:13PM -0000, Steve Langasek wrote:
> I quite agree, and I understand there's meant to be code already here
> to do that, which seems to be failing.

The current code for this in update-manager checks if DEBIAN_FRONTEND is
set to "gnome" without libgtk2-perl installed at the start of the
upgrade, and in that case it sets the frontend to "dialog" and expands
the terminal widget.  However, what's happening here is that
libgtk2-perl gets temporarily deconfigured or removed during the
upgrade, probably due to a major Perl transition.  There's no code in
update-manager to handle that case; it would have to keep an eye on the
terminal to notice attempts to read from it, and expand the terminal
widget then.

(Didn't synaptic or something use to do this, once upon a time?)

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Foundations Bugs, which is subscribed to update-manager in Ubuntu.
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:
  Confirmed

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

To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/+bug/979661/+subscriptions