[Pkg-openssl-devel] Bug#445090: 445090: subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 255

[Zygo Blaxell]

I've just seen similar symptoms to this bug on an upgrade of libssl0.9.8.
One difference is that I see 'exit status 128' instead of 255, but like
this bug there is no indication in the output as to cause, and the upgrade
would not complete despite restarting it several times from aptitude.

I've seen this problem only once despite performing the same upgrade on
10 similarly configured machines.

I then tried tracing the postinst script manually, but when I did so
the problem did not occur and I wasn't able to reproduce it afterwards.

My guess is that something is behaving differently depending on whether
it is run from /usr/share/debconf/frontend or not.  I've had a number of
problems with some packages in the past that set up environment variables
that cause Perl to crash or cause dpkg utilities to change their behavior.
dpkg-cross was the culprit in the most recent case, but dpkg-cross has
been purged from my system for some time now.

This is the (successful) output:

satsuki:~# bash -x /var/lib/dpkg/info/libssl0.9.8.postinst configure 0.9.8e-6
+ . /usr/share/debconf/confmodule
++ '[' '!' '' ']'
++ PERL_DL_NONLAZY=1
++ export PERL_DL_NONLAZY
++ '[' '' ']'
++ exec /usr/share/debconf/frontend /var/lib/dpkg/info/libssl0.9.8.postinst configure 0.9.8e-6
Checking for services that may need to be restarted...done.
Checking init scripts...
Configuring libssl0.9.8
-----------------------

This release of OpenSSL fixes some security issues. Services will not use these fixes until they are restarted. 
Please note that restarting the SSH server (sshd) should not affect any existing connections.

Please check the list of detected services that need to be restarted and correct it, if needed. The services 
names must be identical to the initialization script names in /etc/init.d and separated by spaces. No services 
will be restarted if the list is empty.

Any service that later fails unexpectedly after this upgrade should be restarted. It is recommended to reboot 
this host to avoid any SSL-related trouble.

<am ntp racoon postgresql-8.1 postgresql-7.4 spamassassin openvpn apache ssh



Restarting services possibly affected by the upgrade:
  fetchmail: stopping...starting...done.
  clamav-freshclam: stopping...starting...done.
  ntp: stopping...starting...done.
  racoon: stopping...starting...done.
  postgresql-8.1: stopping...starting...done.
  postgresql-7.4: stopping...starting...done.
  spamassassin: stopping...starting...done.
  openvpn: stopping...starting...done.
  apache: stopping...starting...done.
  ssh: stopping...starting...done.

Services restarted successfully.


-- 
Zygo Blaxell (Laptop) <zblaxell at feedme.hungrycats.org>
GPG = B203 9402 B0E7 0F20 3B74  B13C DFBC C916 4395 FD03
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