Stunnel4 Not Installing On Debian 8

[LinuxFan]

I have tried installing Stunnel4 for use with a VPN, and the package fails to install every time. I made sure my package lists were up to date each time I tried to install the package. Stunnel is downloaded, and the installation process begins, but exits with an error. Output from the terminal is listed below.

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Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'stunnel4' instead of 'stunnel'
stunnel4 is already the newest version.
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  cli-common dkms gir1.2-nautilus-3.0 kbuild libccgnu2-1.8-0 libgdiplus
  libgsoap5 libjson-perl libmilter1.0.1 libmono-accessibility4.0-cil
  libmono-corlib4.5-cil libmono-data-tds4.0-cil libmono-i18n-west4.0-cil
  libmono-i18n4.0-cil libmono-posix4.0-cil libmono-security4.0-cil
  libmono-system-configuration4.0-cil libmono-system-data4.0-cil
  libmono-system-drawing4.0-cil libmono-system-enterpriseservices4.0-cil
  libmono-system-runtime-serialization-formatters-soap4.0-cil
  libmono-system-security4.0-cil libmono-system-transactions4.0-cil
  libmono-system-windows-forms4.0-cil libmono-system-xml4.0-cil
  libmono-system4.0-cil libmono-webbrowser4.0-cil libmonoboehm-2.0-1
  libmonosgen-2.0-1 libnotify-bin libpocofoundation9 libpoconet9 libqt4-opengl
  librlog5 libtext-csv-perl mono-4.0-gac mono-gac mono-runtime
  mono-runtime-common mono-runtime-sgen mono-utils python-nautilus rsync
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
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] y
Setting up stunnel4 (3:5.06-2+deb8u1) ...
Warning: The home dir /var/run/stunnel4 you specified can't be accessed: No such file or directory
Adding system user `stunnel4' (UID 122) ...
Adding new group `stunnel4' (GID 134) ...
groupadd: failure while writing changes to /etc/group
adduser: `/usr/sbin/groupadd -g 134 stunnel4' returned error code 10. Exiting.
dpkg: error processing package stunnel4 (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 stunnel4
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Please help.

[Cefiar]

The answer is hinted at in your terminal output:

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adduser: `/usr/sbin/groupadd -g 134 stunnel4' returned error code 10. Exiting.

if you look at the man page for groupadd (`man groupadd`) you will see that error code 10 means:

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       10
           can't update group file

This means the file /etc/group is locked or another program on the system has it open. You'd get this with any package that tries to add a group to your system, so it's not just stunnel4.

If you're sure that nothing else has the file open, you can manually delete the lock file(s):

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/etc/group.lock
/etc/gshadow.lock

You'll need to do that as root/via sudo of course.

If you then get a different error, report back. It's possible that the group already exists and you'll need to remove the old group first. If that happens, then you'd best report a bug against the package as it should work around that itself.

Note: Be careful NOT to delete the following files by accident:

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/etc/group
/etc/gpasswd

[LinuxFan]

I looked in the /etc folder for said lock files, and couldn't find them. Could this be the cause of the problem?

[Cefiar]

The only other reason is it can't modify them (eg: your root file system is mounted read only, you have disk corruption pertaining to those files, or something has some other lock on them).

You could try (as root) running the command listed that failed and see if it gives you anything more useful in the way of an error.

[LinuxFan]

I've had some issues with my file system being unreadable during boot, and I've had to manually use fsck to fix it. If my disk is the problem, what's the best solution?

Edit: To clarify, I get the same error when trying to run the command myself.

[pendrachken]

I've had some issues with my file system being unreadable during boot, and I've had to manually use fsck to fix it. If my disk is the problem, what's the best solution?

Edit: To clarify, I get the same error when trying to run the command myself.

Sounds like you need to replace the disk, it's going to die soon. If the kernel slams the disk into RO mode more than once or twice that means that disk is toast and should NEVER EVER be trusted again. Backup any data you don't want to lose and get a new disk, now, and for all that's dear don't shutdown / reboot until you have backups. That disk might just fail and completely disappear on the next boot (not physically, the disk will still be there but can't be accessed at all without removing the guts and putting them into a similar working disk housing).