Subject: Problems installing Ubuntu 10.10 as a guest of a Debian host
From: Markus Fischer <markus@fischer.name>
Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2010 17:46:23 +0200

Hi,

I'm running a Host with Debian Lenny on 2.6.26-2-vserver-amd64 with 
VS-API: 0x00020303 and util-vserver: 0.30.216-pre2772; Dec 13 2008, 
04:56:19 (it's basically all standard Debian installation).

I now would like to get Ubuntu 10.10 as guest running. For that I 
started out with creating a symlink "maverick" in 
/usr/share/debootstrap/scripts pointing to "gutsy" (I did this because I 
found that in an ubuntu server I installed on a machine directly it was 
the same).

The build process went OK until the end:

I: Configuring python-central...
W: Failure while configuring base packages.  This will be attempted 5 times.
I: Configuring procps...
W: Failure while configuring base packages.  This will be attempted 5 times.
W: Failure while configuring base packages.  This will be attempted 5 times.
W: Failure while configuring base packages.  This will be attempted 5 times.
W: Failure while configuring base packages.  This will be attempted 5 times.
I: Base system installed successfully.


I found out about 
http://linux-vserver.org/Installing_Ubuntu_8.04_Hardy_as_guest which 
basically said that this message can be ignored.

I've then started and entered the vserver and adjusted the sources.list 
to point to my apt-proxy:

deb http://apt-proxy:9999/ubuntu/ maverick main restricted universe 
multiverse
deb-src http://apt-proxy:9999/ubuntu/ maverick main restricted universe 
multiverse
deb http://apt-proxy:9999/ubuntu-security/ maverick main restricted 
universe multiverse
deb-src http://apt-proxy:9999/ubuntu-security/ maverick main restricted 
universe multiverse

First thing I tried was to set the proper locale:

# dpkg-reconfigure locales
perl: warning: Setting locale failed.
perl: warning: Please check that your locale settings:
         LANGUAGE = (unset),
         LC_ALL = (unset),
         LANG = "en_US.UTF-8"
     are supported and installed on your system.
perl: warning: Falling back to the standard locale ("C").
locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory

The locales package is installed:

# dpkg -l locales|grep '^ii'
ii  locales                     2.13+git20100825-1       common files 
for locale support

I've then tried to install some random package, e.g. "mc" and it worked 
but it spilled my screen with lots of warning messages, boiling down to 
that there are three packages which can't be properly set up (I've 
removed all the perl ocale error messages, it makes it pretty unreadable):


Setting up rsyslog (4.2.0-2ubuntu8) ...
start: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket 
/com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused
invoke-rc.d: initscript rsyslog, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error processing rsyslog (--configure):
  subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Setting up procps (1:3.2.8-9ubuntu3) ...
start: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket 
/com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused
dpkg: error processing procps (--configure):
  subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of ubuntu-minimal:
  ubuntu-minimal depends on procps; however:
   Package procps is not configured yet.
  ubuntu-minimal depends on rsyslog; however:
   Package rsyslog is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing ubuntu-minimal (--configure):
  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
No apport report written because the error message indicates its a 
followup error from a previous failure.
Errors were encountered while processing:
  rsyslog
  procps
  ubuntu-minimal
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)


I googled a bit but couldn't distill were to head from there. The only 
thing I realized is that Upstart replaced the traditional init.d event 
mechanism, but I'm unsure how to proceed from here. I guess my goal 
should be "to get upstart" running but I've yet to find some background 
about the problem.

Has anyone encountered this or knows any workarounds? I'm not sure if 
the inability to configure the locales is related to this, help on that 
matter is very much appreciated too.

thanks,
- Markus