I am running Ubuntu 10.04 (for hardware legacy compatibility purposes) as a guest system on a VMware Player machine.
Recently I am facing problems with updating, starting-up the system and running applications.
Specifically, it began when the Update Manager no longer updated the listed packages. When running the manager, it identified 104 packages to update, but when clicking on Install Updates, it reads the package information and rebuild the database, but does not perform any actual update. I then tried the command line, using:
sudo apt-get upgrade
and the updater run mostly successfully. However, a few packages are not getting updated. The current response I get is:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
linux-generic linux-headers-generic linux-image-generic
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Setting up shared-mime-info (0.71-1ubuntu2) ...
Segmentation fault
dpkg: error processing shared-mime-info (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 139
Errors were encountered while processing:
shared-mime-info
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
Multiple restarting of the system did not solve this problem.
What is the problem with the Update Manager and why don't the listed packages get updated? What is the cause for the "segmentation fault"?
A second problem that I face is with the startup of the system. When restarting the system and logging into my account, I get the following error message pop-ups:
The relevant applets do not load, so I don't have the clock, workspace switch, etc.
What does prevent the applets from loading?
A third problem is with running the Evolution mail client. When running the software, either form the Applications menu or from command line, I get the following response:
$ ps -ef | grep evo
144:ysap 2034 1884 0 15:03 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/evolution/2.28/evolution-alarm-notify
147:ysap 2059 1 1 15:03 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/evolution/evolution-data-server-2.28 --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Evolution_DataServer_CalFactory:1.2 --oaf-ior-fd=22
148:ysap 2066 1 0 15:03 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/evolution/2.28/evolution-exchange-storage --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Evolution_Exchange_Connector_CalFactory:1.2 --oaf-ior-fd=25
152:ysap 2119 2036 0 15:04 pts/0 00:00:00 grep -n --color=auto evo
$ evolution
** (evolution:2129): DEBUG: mailto URL command: evolution %s
** (evolution:2129): DEBUG: mailto URL program: evolution
Segmentation fault
$ ps -ef | grep evo
144:ysap 2034 1884 0 15:03 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/evolution/2.28/evolution-alarm-notify
147:ysap 2059 1 0 15:03 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/evolution/evolution-data-server-2.28 --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Evolution_DataServer_CalFactory:1.2 --oaf-ior-fd=22
148:ysap 2066 1 0 15:03 ? 00:00:00 /usr/lib/evolution/2.28/evolution-exchange-storage --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Evolution_Exchange_Connector_CalFactory:1.2 --oaf-ior-fd=25
153:ysap 2142 2036 0 15:05 pts/0 00:00:00 grep -n --color=auto evo
UPDATE: I just found that gedit, although starts normally, crashes (seg. fault) when selecting and opening a file. gvim, OTOH, works just fine.
What causes this segmentation fault?
The three problems described above were not issues until a couple of weeks ago. Multiple restarting of the system does not solve them. I believe they are all related, but I am not sure where to start debugging this.
