Kernel update fails repeatedly (Solved)

[j2mcgreg]

Since Monday, Synaptic has been trying and failing to apply the latest kernel update and it gives this explanation for the failure:

E: linux-image-4.19.0-12-amd64: installed linux-image-4.19.0-12-amd64 package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
E: linux-image-amd64: dependency problems - leaving unconfigured

How do I remove this kernel package from Synaptic's queue?

edited to add QSI

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System:    Host: <filter> Kernel: 4.19.0-11-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 8.3.0 
           parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.19.0-11-amd64 
           root=UUID=<filter> ro quiet splash 
           Desktop: Xfce 4.14.2 tk: Gtk 3.24.5 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm4 dm: LightDM 1.26.0 
           Distro: MX-19.2_x64 patito feo May 31  2020 base: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: Acer product: Aspire V5-571 v: V1.12 serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: Acer model: Aspire V5-571 v: V1.12 serial: <filter> UEFI: Phoenix v: 1.12 
           date: 06/12/2012 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 29.2 Wh condition: 30.3/37.0 Wh (82%) volts: 17.3/14.8 
           model: SANYO AL12A32 type: Li-ion serial: <filter> status: Charging 
CPU:       Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core i3-2367M bits: 64 type: MT MCP 
           arch: Sandy Bridge family: 6 model-id: 2A (42) stepping: 7 microcode: 2F 
           L2 cache: 3072 KiB 
           flags: avx lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 11175 
           Speed: 798 MHz min/max: 800/1400 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 798 2: 798 3: 798 4: 798 
           Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: Split huge pages 
           Type: l1tf mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable 
           Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable 
           Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI 
           Type: spec_store_bypass 
           mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
           Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
           Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional, IBRS_FW, 
           STIBP: conditional, RSB filling 
           Type: srbds status: Not affected 
           Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics 
           vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 
           chip ID: 8086:0116 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa 
           resolution: 1366x768~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Sandybridge Mobile v: 3.3 Mesa 18.3.6 compat-v: 3.0 
           direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel 7 Series/C216 Family High Definition Audio 
           vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 00:1b.0 
           chip ID: 8086:1e20 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.19.0-11-amd64 
Network:   Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
           vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 2000 bus ID: 02:00.2 
           chip ID: 10ec:8168 
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR9462 Wireless Network Adapter vendor: Lite-On 
           driver: ath9k v: kernel port: 2000 bus ID: 03:00.0 chip ID: 168c:0034 
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 465.76 GiB used: 16.02 GiB (3.4%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Hitachi model: HTS545050A7E380 size: 465.76 GiB block size: 
           physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B speed: 3.0 Gb/s rotation: 5400 rpm serial: <filter> 
           rev: A6C0 scheme: GPT 
Partition: ID-1: / raw size: 463.48 GiB size: 455.21 GiB (98.21%) used: 16.02 GiB (3.5%) 
           fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2 
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 2.00 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap swappiness: 15 (default 60) 
           cache pressure: 100 (default) dev: /dev/sda3 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 45.0 C mobo: N/A 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Repos:     No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list 
           1: deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb http://mirrors.rit.edu/mxlinux/mx-packages/mx/repo/ buster main non-free
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/various.list 
Info:      Processes: 199 Uptime: 23m Memory: 7.59 GiB used: 728.1 MiB (9.4%) Init: SysVinit 
           v: 2.93 runlevel: 5 default: 5 Compilers: gcc: 8.3.0 alt: 8 Shell: quick-system-in 
           running in: quick-system-in inxi: 3.0.36 

[tony37]

what do you get when you do this?

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sudo apt install -f

[j2mcgreg]

what do you get when you do this?

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sudo apt install -f

That command produces this:

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Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  linux-headers-4.19.0-10-amd64 linux-headers-4.19.0-10-common linux-image-4.19.0-10-amd64
  python3-pypdf2 xsel
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Setting up linux-image-4.19.0-12-amd64 (4.19.152-1) ...
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools:
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.19.0-12-amd64
cryptsetup: WARNING: The initramfs image may not contain cryptsetup binaries 
    nor crypto modules. If that's on purpose, you may want to uninstall the 
    'cryptsetup-initramfs' package in order to disable the cryptsetup initramfs 
    integration and avoid this warning.
I: The initramfs will attempt to resume from /dev/sda3
I: (UUID=71d9b849-f369-4430-8915-32e48092d2a3)
I: Set the RESUME variable to override this.
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/zz-update-grub:
/usr/sbin/grub-mkconfig: 9: /etc/default/grub: off: not found
run-parts: /etc/kernel/postinst.d/zz-update-grub exited with return code 127
dpkg: error processing package linux-image-4.19.0-12-amd64 (--configure):
 installed linux-image-4.19.0-12-amd64 package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of linux-image-amd64:
 linux-image-amd64 depends on linux-image-4.19.0-12-amd64; however:
  Package linux-image-4.19.0-12-amd64 is not configured yet.

dpkg: error processing package linux-image-amd64 (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 linux-image-4.19.0-12-amd64
 linux-image-amd64
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

[dolphin_oracle]

you can purge a not-quite-installed package.

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apt purge linux-image-4.19.0-12-amd64

[tony37]

This looks wrong:

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/usr/sbin/grub-mkconfig: 9: /etc/default/grub: off: not found

Can you post contents of /etc/default/grub ?

[tony37]

@ dolphin: that would also remove linux-image-amd64

[j2mcgreg]

This looks wrong:

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/usr/sbin/grub-mkconfig: 9: /etc/default/grub: off: not found

Can you post contents of /etc/default/grub ?

Here it is:

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# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in this file, see:
#   info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="$(unset PRETTY_NAME; (. /etc/lsb-release; echo ${PRETTY_NAME:?}) 2>/dev/null || echo Debian)"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" acpi=force apm=power off
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
#GRUB_TERMINAL=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x768

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

# Uncomment to get a beep at grub start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"

GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=false
#export GRUB_MENU_PICTURE="/usr/share/backgrounds/MXLinux/grub/linen-gradientblu-grub.png"
#export GRUB_MENU_PICTURE="/usr/share/backgrounds/MX18ALPHAWALL.png"

GRUB_THEME="/boot/grub/themes/linen/theme.txt"

[tony37]

You have this:

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GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" acpi=force apm=power off

I suppose you have to change this to

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GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi=force apm=power_off"

Now Grub thinks the word 'off' is a kernel parameter in itself.

[j2mcgreg]

I made the change and ran:

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sudo apt install -f

again and this time the kernel update installed correctly.

Thank You

[dolphin_oracle]

nice tony!