Bug#774153: wheezy->jessie: systemd-tty-ask-password-agent hung

[Christian Brunotte]

Package: systemd
Version: 215-8

Hallo

I tried to upgrade from wheezy to jessie but had problems because
the install hung several times e.g. when upgrading snmpd and cups.

The last program in the process tree always was systemd-tty-ask-password-agent.
I tried it on xterm as well as on plain tty1 console but never got any
prompt for a password nor could I understand why a password query would
be needed.

chammers at sys-251:~$ ps faxu
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
...
chammers 18501  0.0  0.0   7360  5092 pts/1    Ss   15:33   0:00  \_ /bin/bash
root     20804  0.0  0.0   6240  3176 pts/1    S    15:33   0:00  |   \_ su
root     20815  0.0  0.0   5652  3432 pts/1    S    15:33   0:00  |       \_ bash
root     23011  0.1  0.3  37896 30564 pts/1    S+   15:34   0:00  |           \_ apt-get -f install
root     32120  0.0  0.4  40716 37648 pts/4    Ss+  15:37   0:00  |               \_ /usr/bin/dpkg --status-fd 36 --force-depends --force-remove-essential --remove printer-driver-gutenprint:i386 cups:i386 libgtk2.0-dev:i386 libpango1.0-
root     32121  0.0  0.0   2240   592 pts/4    S+   15:37   0:00  |                   \_ /bin/sh /var/lib/dpkg/info/printer-driver-gutenprint.postrm remove
root     32122  0.0  0.0   2240  1528 pts/4    S+   15:37   0:00  |                       \_ /bin/sh /usr/sbin/invoke-rc.d cups force-reload
root     32139  0.0  0.0   2240  1560 pts/4    S+   15:37   0:00  |                           \_ /bin/sh /etc/init.d/cups force-reload
root     32160  0.0  0.0   6640  2832 pts/4    S+   15:37   0:00  |                               \_ /bin/systemctl force-reload cups.service
root     32161  0.0  0.0   2952  1532 pts/4    S+   15:37   0:00  |                                   \_ /bin/systemd-tty-ask-password-agent --watch

chammers at sys-251:~$ date
Mo 29. Dez 15:41:18 CET 2014


My upgrade attempts were as follows:
* booted wheezy with linux-image-3.16-bpo into console mode as
  nvidia drivers were not found
* added wheezy to /etc/apt/sources.list, updated and installed just
  the new kernel. Rebootet again into console mode.
* Tried upgrading only xserver-xorg-driver-nvidia but as that had
  too many dependencies, went for "apt-get upgrade".
* Encountered the systemd-tty-ask-password-agent problem.
* Managed to get X11+KDE running again and tried apt-get upgrade on
  xterm ("konsole" program). Encounred same system-tty-ask-password-agent
  problem again, this time on package snmpd.

I temporarily solved the hanging process using "killall -9 systemctl" several
times quickly after another. 

Did not yet finish the installation process...

tschüss,

-christian-