Public bug reported: I just installed fglrx (2:13.350.1-0ubuntu3) on Utopic. It causes a CPU hang (see Bug 1338177), so I wanted to remove it.
Running: sudo apt-get purge fglrx fglrx-amdcccle silently hangs, indefinitely. The prompt just never returns (not even with Ctrl-C). I tracked the bug down to this script: /var/lib/dpkg/info/fglrx.postrm whose process I was able to kill, and dpkg then continued (to a non-graceful exit); -- Purging configuration files for fglrx (2:13.350.1-0ubuntu3) ... dpkg: error processing package fglrx (--purge): subprocess installed post-removal script was killed by signal (Terminated) Errors were encountered while processing: fglrx E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) --- The offending line in the postrm script is this one: update-rc.d atieventsd remove >/dev/null Having commented it out, I was then able to re-run the sudo apt-get purge fglrx fglrx-amdcccle successfully. The root cause seems to be that the command: /usr/lib/insserv/insserv will sit there interminably, inactively, and unkillably. even sudo killall -9 insserv won't stop it. To fully recover from the insserv hang, I had to shut down the machine, with shutdown -h now, and even that didn't fully go down; I had to eventually physically reset the box. There are really 3 bugs here: 1. The fglrx package cannot be gracefully uninstalled. 2. insserv needs to be killed with fire. 3. the kernel's reboot or shutdown commands fail if a process like insserv is stuck in the "D" state. ** Affects: linux (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided Status: New -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Kernel Packages, which is subscribed to linux in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1338603 Title: fglrx deb postrm script hangs indefinitely Status in “linux” package in Ubuntu: New Bug description: I just installed fglrx (2:13.350.1-0ubuntu3) on Utopic. It causes a CPU hang (see Bug 1338177), so I wanted to remove it. Running: sudo apt-get purge fglrx fglrx-amdcccle silently hangs, indefinitely. The prompt just never returns (not even with Ctrl-C). I tracked the bug down to this script: /var/lib/dpkg/info/fglrx.postrm whose process I was able to kill, and dpkg then continued (to a non-graceful exit); -- Purging configuration files for fglrx (2:13.350.1-0ubuntu3) ... dpkg: error processing package fglrx (--purge): subprocess installed post-removal script was killed by signal (Terminated) Errors were encountered while processing: fglrx E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) --- The offending line in the postrm script is this one: update-rc.d atieventsd remove >/dev/null Having commented it out, I was then able to re-run the sudo apt-get purge fglrx fglrx-amdcccle successfully. The root cause seems to be that the command: /usr/lib/insserv/insserv will sit there interminably, inactively, and unkillably. even sudo killall -9 insserv won't stop it. To fully recover from the insserv hang, I had to shut down the machine, with shutdown -h now, and even that didn't fully go down; I had to eventually physically reset the box. There are really 3 bugs here: 1. The fglrx package cannot be gracefully uninstalled. 2. insserv needs to be killed with fire. 3. the kernel's reboot or shutdown commands fail if a process like insserv is stuck in the "D" state. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1338603/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kernel-packages Post to : kernel-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kernel-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp