I've hit this bug when upgrading Maverick to Natty, and
I've also had it happen a year or two ago during a previous upgrade.
The older one:
- For some reason after downloading everything in a full GUI-led upgrade, some other package
caused the wireless network to turn off and flashplugin then quietly failed to install properly
but marked itself as done. It was a proper Ubuntu upgrade, so it's only by chance that I
happened to look at the "details" window as it failed and knew what to do.
- Maverick to Natty failure. Again a full upgrade (this time I used do-release-upgrade from the
command line though.) flashplugin again failed, this time with the same errors as comment
#10 - it's trying to resolve "false".
Because it shows the full URL, and finished with a permission error rather than an DNS failure
(unfortunately my ISP has a wildcard DNS for all failed matches), I wrongly thought it was
a Canonical server being temporarily broken, and would be well known and fixed in due course.
But no, and looking now, I see it's an old proxy setting in /etc/apt.conf.
Here's the thing: That setting is exactly what the original CD-ROM installer had put there.
I've never changed it. It says:
That's been there since my first Ubuntu (probably Dapper) from CD-ROM, and not many
packages use that setting. It's been there for so long, why did previous flashplugin
installers work fine? Has the meaning of Acquire::http::Proxy changed, and flashplugin
(perhaps foolishly) decided to depend on the new meaning ,without apt's own upgrade script
deleting redundant old settings?
Anyway, the main point of *this* bug is it silently leaves "flashplugin-installer" installed and configured but Flash not working. And sometimes, even reinstalling/reconfiguring the package doesn't fix an Ubuntu that's been
through quite a few upgrades before getting to Natty.
I've hit this bug when upgrading Maverick to Natty, and
I've also had it happen a year or two ago during a previous upgrade.
The older one:
- For some reason after downloading everything in a full GUI-led upgrade, some other package
caused the wireless network to turn off and flashplugin then quietly failed to install properly
but marked itself as done. It was a proper Ubuntu upgrade, so it's only by chance that I
happened to look at the "details" window as it failed and knew what to do.
- Maverick to Natty failure. Again a full upgrade (this time I used do-release-upgrade from the
command line though.) flashplugin again failed, this time with the same errors as comment
#10 - it's trying to resolve "false".
Because it shows the full URL, and finished with a permission error rather than an DNS failure
(unfortunately my ISP has a wildcard DNS for all failed matches), I wrongly thought it was
a Canonical server being temporarily broken, and would be well known and fixed in due course.
But no, and looking now, I see it's an old proxy setting in /etc/apt.conf.
Here's the thing: That setting is exactly what the original CD-ROM installer had put there.
I've never changed it. It says:
APT: :Authentication ::TrustCDROM "true"; :http:: Proxy "false";
Acquire:
That's been there since my first Ubuntu (probably Dapper) from CD-ROM, and not many :http:: Proxy changed, and flashplugin
packages use that setting. It's been there for so long, why did previous flashplugin
installers work fine? Has the meaning of Acquire:
(perhaps foolishly) decided to depend on the new meaning ,without apt's own upgrade script
deleting redundant old settings?
Anyway, the main point of *this* bug is it silently leaves "flashplugin- installer" installed and configured but Flash not working. And sometimes, even reinstalling/ reconfiguring the package doesn't fix an Ubuntu that's been
through quite a few upgrades before getting to Natty.