The problem arose because my acpid was broken due to an upgrade that was interrupted by a power outage. Thus, I can't actually duplicate the behavior. However, I'm pretty sure I know what was going on:
If invoke-rc.d is told to start acpid but acpid is already running, it returns an error because of the already running version. However, if acpid is not running, it works. Normally, it's impossible for acpid to be simultaneously running and "not installed", but that became the case on my system (i.e. it was installed, but dpkg didn't think that configuration was done, and so thought of it as uninstalled. So I guess the bug boils down to: if you try to install acpid while it is running, you cannot install it, and are stuck because uninstalling a package that isn't installed (or so thinks dpkg) doesn't wind up stopping acpid. Manually stopping acpid and then running dpkg --configure is the only option. Of course, sicne I can't duplicate the conditions without crashing my computer just right (or perhaps a lot of experience with dpkg that I don't have) I cannot actually confirm my suspicions about this bug. Best then to ignore it, unless a look at the source can confirm my suspicions and give a quick fix (for example, if "invoke-rc.d ... start" fails, try "invoke-rc.d ... restart"). Sorry for the trouble, -Peter Mawhorter -- dpkg --configure -a fails when acpid is running because invoke-rc.d fails. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/155914 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is the bug contact for Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
