Errors were encountered while processing: man-db

[hubblexplore]

I run a 2 weeks old Ubuntu Server 10.04 LTS (32-bit). Today I wanted to check for eventual updates and install them with the following commands:

aptitude update
aptitude safe-upgrade

Here is the error I get at the end of the update:

Errors were encountered while processing:
 man-db
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:
Setting up man-db (2.5.7-2) ...
Can't exec "/var/lib/dpkg/info/man-db.config": Permission denied at /usr/share/perl/5.10/IPC/Open3.pm line 168.
open2: exec of /var/lib/dpkg/info/man-db.config configure 2.5.7-2 failed at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/ConfModule.pm line 59
dpkg: error processing man-db (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 255
Errors were encountered while processing:
 man-db
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done

Can someone please help me?

Thank you!

[windependence]

Try:

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude safe-upgrade

without using sudo you don't have enough permission to execute the update.

-Tim

[hubblexplore]

I think there's no need for that, because I was already root with this command

sudo su

[windependence]

The problem is your /tmp directory is mounted nonexec and executables cannot be run from /tmp. Since apt extracts some packages to /tmp and runs them from there. Try this as root:

mount -o remount,exec /tmp

Then retry your updates. If you are concerned about security with /tmp, remount with noexec like this after you are done:

mount -o remount,noexec /tmp

More info here: http://www.debian-administration.org...non-executable

-Tim

[hubblexplore]

It seems /tmp is not mounted already, I get this error:

mount: /tmp not mounted already, or bad option

Don't know if this is the correct approach but I tried:

mount -o exec /tmp

and in response got this error:

mount: unknown filesystem type 'none'

Checked in webmin to see permissions of /tmp:
1777 Ownership, user:root, group:root

L.E.: I can run executables from /tmp, so it can't be mounted nonexec.

L.E.: /var/lib/dpkg/info/man-db.config had owner: root/root, permissions: 644, changed that to 755 and the update resumed ok.

[Arachan]

Greetings,

Sorry to resurrect a dead thread hubblexplore, but did you ever fix this? I now have the exact same problem.

Thanks,
Arachan.