I've not managed to reproduce this. I tried installing upstart-sysv on a Wily cloud image and upgrading it to Xenial. This made the systemd preinst fail (which may be a separate bug) but I didn't see any openssh failure. I also tried installing upstart-sysv on a Vivid cloud image and upgrading that to Wily and then to Xenial. This worked without problems.
Installing upstart-sysv does remove ubuntu-standard as you say, so I'm not sure this is a supported path. So I'm marking Importance as Low on the basis that it is at least an uncommon path that will not affect the majority of users. I'm not sure how this might make any further progress without steps to reproduce. ** Changed in: openssh (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided => Low -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to openssh in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1579978 Title: upgrade to 1:7.2p2-4ubuntu1 fails on ubuntu server Status in openssh package in Ubuntu: New Bug description: This package upgrade failure has occurred on multiple machines, with the same error on each machine. All affected machines are running Upstart (upstart-sysv) as /sbin/init. The package installed/updated successfully on a machine running Systemd (systemd-sysv) as /sbin/init. $ sudo apt full-upgrade Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Calculating upgrade... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: linux-image-4.2.0-35-generic linux-image-extra-4.2.0-35-generic Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them. 0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 0 not to upgrade. 1 not fully installed or removed. After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n] Setting up openssh-server (1:7.2p2-4ubuntu1) ... start: Job failed to start invoke-rc.d: initscript ssh, action "restart" failed. dpkg: error processing package openssh-server (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 Errors were encountered while processing: openssh-server E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1) ProblemType: Bug DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04 Package: openssh-server 1:7.2p2-4ubuntu1 ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-22.39-generic 4.4.8 Uname: Linux 4.4.0-22-generic x86_64 ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2 Architecture: amd64 Date: Tue May 10 11:51:58 2016 InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-09-04 (249 days ago) InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 15.04 "Vivid Vervet" - Release amd64 (20150422) SourcePackage: openssh UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to xenial on 2016-05-04 (5 days ago) To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openssh/+bug/1579978/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
