broke package management (warning long)

[Jeffry Smith]

On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 10:52 PM, Joshua Judson Rosen
<rozzin at geekspace.com> wrote:
> Jeffry Smith <jsmith at alum.mit.edu> writes:
>> dpkg is failing because update-initramfs is trying to build
>> an initramfs for a kernel that doesn't have modules installed.
>>
>> You can also run update-initramfs manually (sudo update-initramfs -k
>> all), and it should update all kernels you have, although will through
>> an error on the 2.6.30.7 one without the modules.  If there are still
>> problems, run "sudo update-initramfs -k <insert kernel name here>" to
>> just update one of the kernels in your boot directory.
>
> She'll still need to actually get the issue resolved in some way
> that allows that stuck postinst script to complete successfully, though.
>
> One way, which has been suggested, is to go find the missing modules
> and install them.
>
> Alternately, she's sure that she's not actually using that kernel,
> maybe she could just *remove it the bad kernel* rather than trying
> to make it good?
>
Yes, that's an option.  Either get the modules installed or remove the
kernel from /boot (assuming it's not needed for boot, which I assume
not, since she's able to get it up to run apt/dpkg).
update-initramfs doesn't actually care where or how the kernel/modules
were installed.  It just iterates over the kernels it finds in /boot
building initramfs's.  The actual dpkg problem is that the postinst
script is not finishing because update-initramfs is failing, not a
problem with dpkg.  It's working exactly as designed.