Apparently do not have enough knowledge to upgrade procps (Ubuntu 12.04)
 

My question has gone unanswered on Ubunto forums which generally means it is too simple. Update manager fails to update procps.

Output from sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade is shown below.

The following packages will be upgraded:
procps
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0 B/235 kB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y
Setting up procps (1:3.2.8-11ubuntu6.2) ...
start: Job failed to start
invoke-rc.d: initscript procps, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error processing procps (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
procps
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

How does one resolve this problem?

Thank you,

John

maybe remove procps first, run apt-get with some clean or cleanup switch, then try again?

edit: is the output you posted part of a longer update procedure? i'm not 100% sure procps is the actual culprit.

After some reading, I tried to remove procps.

$ sudo apt-get remove procps
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
adduser : Depends: passwd (>= 1:4.0.12)
Recommends: ecryptfs-utils (>= 67-1) but it is not going to be installed
openssh-client : Depends: passwd
openssh-server : Depends: procps
upstart : Depends: initscripts
Depends: mountall
Depends: ifupdown (>= 0.6.10ubuntu5)
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.

It looks like I am in a maze w/o an exit route.

John

Okay, found the solution buried in askUbuntu. I use SpiderOak for off-site backup of critical files. A version of the SpiderOak client software was causing the problem. It went away once I updated the SpiderOak client.

John

this looks like apt-get allowed you to uninstall procps, although that results in unmet dependencies?!
i hope i'm misunderstanding this.
please make sure your packet management isn't borked.

in any case you MUST reinstall procps, it's a very important package.
then run a full update and clean/autoclean (i don't know the exact options for apt-get. try "man apt-get")

i'm sorry, in my last post i wrote "try again" and meant "reinstall procps again".

if you need more assistance, answer the second question in my last post, too.

Thank you for your help. Once I installed the updated version of the SpiderOak client, all problems went away, and all updates went to completion. Synaptic is showing the latest version of procps installed.

John