kernel security upgrade fails on depmod

[dukeinlondon]

A security upgrade of the kernel is leaving my computer a bit stumped : it freeze gnome hard on depmod. switching to a virtual console, I see plenty of ata errors.

the update manager recommends to use dpkg --configure -a to finish the interupted operation but that only reproduces the problem....

Is there a way out ?

[dukeinlondon]

figured it out :

To get dpkg unstuck I ran

sudo dpkg --remove --pending