"E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem."
If I try to run that command it hangs my system (and messes up my grub installation so that I have to boot manually from the grub command line prompt or a rescue disk).
I used to have unattended-updates running to install security updates. (I have that disabled now!) I think the problem must have started when unattended-updates tried to update the linux kernel or grub itself.
This is on an Acer laptop with a broken UEFI implementation so I need to install grub in the removable media path. Each time dpkg --configure -a fails I have to reinstall grub to that path by booting from the installation cd in rescue mode.
The half-configured packages can be seen with this command (note halF-configured grub and shim files):
Code: Select all
# dpkg -l | grep -v '^ii'
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-==============================-===================================-============-===============================================================================
rc firewalld 0.6.3-5 all dynamically managed firewall with support for network zones
iF grub-efi-amd64 2.02+dfsg1-20+deb10u4 amd64 GRand Unified Bootloader, version 2 (EFI-AMD64 version)
it libc-bin 2.28-10 amd64 GNU C Library: Binaries
rc linux-image-4.19.0-10-amd64 4.19.132-1 amd64 Linux 4.19 for 64-bit PCs (signed)
[ snip: various other inux-image-4.19.0-xx-amd64 files in the same state ]
rc linux-image-4.19.0-13-amd64 4.19.160-2 amd64 Linux 4.19 for 64-bit PCs (signed)
it man-db 2.8.5-2 amd64 on-line manual pager
iF shim-helpers-amd64-signed 1+15.4+5~deb10u1 amd64 boot loader to chain-load signed boot loaders (signed by Debian)
iU shim-signed:amd64 1.36~1+deb10u1+15.4-5~deb10u1 amd64 Secure Boot chain-loading bootloader (Microsoft-signed binary)
#