Bug#854896: exim4: Dpkg fails to upgrade exim4 on debian sid.

Sat Feb 11 17:00:29 UTC 2017

Package: exim4
Version: 4.89~RC3-1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

apt upgrade fails to upgrade exim4 and exim4-daemon-light.

Tried purging the package and reinstalling:

$ sudo apt install exim4 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following package was automatically installed and is no longer required:
  liblockfile1
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove it.
The following additional packages will be installed:
  exim4-daemon-light
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  exim4 exim4-daemon-light
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/548 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1,223 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 
Retrieving bug reports... Done
Parsing Found/Fixed information... Done
Preconfiguring packages ...
Selecting previously unselected package exim4-daemon-light.
(Reading database ... 422959 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../exim4-daemon-light_4.89~RC3-1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking exim4-daemon-light (4.89~RC3-1) ...
Selecting previously unselected package exim4.
Preparing to unpack .../exim4_4.89~RC3-1_all.deb ...
Unpacking exim4 (4.89~RC3-1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.6.1-2) ...
Setting up exim4-daemon-light (4.89~RC3-1) ...
Job for exim4.service failed because of unavailable resources or another system error.
See "systemctl status exim4.service" and "journalctl -xe" for details.
invoke-rc.d: initscript exim4, action "start" failed.
● exim4.service - LSB: exim Mail Transport Agent
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/exim4; generated; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: resources) since Sat 2017-02-11 14:01:41 BRST; 12ms ago
     Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
  Process: 21370 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/exim4 start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

fev 11 13:57:10 fx8350 systemd[1]: Starting LSB: exim Mail Transport Agent...
fev 11 13:57:11 fx8350 exim4[21370]: Starting MTA: exim4.
fev 11 13:57:11 fx8350 exim4[21370]: ALERT: exim paniclog /var/log/exim4/paniclog has non-zero size…broken
fev 11 13:57:11 fx8350 systemd[1]: exim4.service: PID file /var/run/exim4/exim.pid not readable (y…rectory
fev 11 14:01:41 fx8350 systemd[1]: exim4.service: Daemon never wrote its PID file. Failing.
fev 11 14:01:41 fx8350 systemd[1]: Failed to start LSB: exim Mail Transport Agent.
fev 11 14:01:41 fx8350 systemd[1]: exim4.service: Unit entered failed state.
fev 11 14:01:41 fx8350 systemd[1]: exim4.service: Failed with result 'resources'.
Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.
dpkg: error processing package exim4-daemon-light (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of exim4:
 exim4 depends on exim4-daemon-light | exim4-daemon-heavy | exim4-daemon-custom; however:
  Package exim4-daemon-light is not configured yet.
  Package exim4-daemon-heavy is not installed.
  Package exim4-daemon-custom is not installed.

dpkg: error processing package exim4 (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 exim4-daemon-light
 exim4
needrestart is being skipped since dpkg has failed
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

and journal log:

$ sudo journalctl -xe
fev 11 14:14:31 fx8350 systemd[1]: exim4.service: Daemon never wrote its PID file. Failing.
fev 11 14:14:31 fx8350 systemd[1]: Failed to start LSB: exim Mail Transport Agent.
-- Subject: Unit exim4.service has failed
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://www.debian.org/support
-- 
-- Unit exim4.service has failed.
-- 
-- The result is failed.
fev 11 14:14:31 fx8350 systemd[1]: exim4.service: Unit entered failed state.
fev 11 14:14:31 fx8350 systemd[1]: exim4.service: Failed with result 'resources'.

If this is not a exim4 bug, but a dpkg one, let me know and I will open another bug report.

-- Package-specific info:
Exim version 4.89 #2 built 10-Feb-2017 18:08:52
Copyright (c) University of Cambridge, 1995 - 2017
(c) The Exim Maintainers and contributors in ACKNOWLEDGMENTS file, 2007 - 2017
Berkeley DB: Berkeley DB 5.3.28: (September  9, 2013)
Support for: crypteq iconv() IPv6 GnuTLS move_frozen_messages DKIM DNSSEC Event OCSP PRDR SOCKS TCP_Fast_Open
Lookups (built-in): lsearch wildlsearch nwildlsearch iplsearch cdb dbm dbmjz dbmnz dnsdb dsearch nis nis0 passwd
Authenticators: cram_md5 plaintext
Routers: accept dnslookup ipliteral manualroute queryprogram redirect
Transports: appendfile/maildir/mailstore autoreply lmtp pipe smtp
Fixed never_users: 0
Configure owner: 0:0
Size of off_t: 8
Configuration file is /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated
# /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf
#
# Edit this file and /etc/mailname by hand and execute update-exim4.conf
# yourself or use 'dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config'
#
# Please note that this is _not_ a dpkg-conffile and that automatic changes
# to this file might happen. The code handling this will honor your local
# changes, so this is usually fine, but will break local schemes that mess
# around with multiple versions of the file.
#
# update-exim4.conf uses this file to determine variable values to generate
# exim configuration macros for the configuration file.
#
# Most settings found in here do have corresponding questions in the
# Debconf configuration, but not all of them.
#
# This is a Debian specific file

dc_eximconfig_configtype='local'
dc_other_hostnames='fx8350'
dc_local_interfaces='127.0.0.1 ; ::1'
dc_readhost=''
dc_relay_domains=''
dc_minimaldns='false'
dc_relay_nets=''
dc_smarthost=''
CFILEMODE='644'
dc_use_split_config='false'
dc_hide_mailname=''
dc_mailname_in_oh='true'
dc_localdelivery='mail_spool'
mailname:fx8350

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (900, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages exim4 depends on:
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]  1.5.60
ii  exim4-base             4.89~RC3-1
ih  exim4-daemon-light     4.89~RC3-1

exim4 recommends no packages.

exim4 suggests no packages.

-- debconf information:
  exim4/drec: