fails to install -- possibly due to implicit dependency on default-display-manager?

Thanks for your bug. What version of Ubuntu do you use? The message about /var/lib/gdm already existing is weird since you don't have it before installing. Do you have a way to reproduce the issue?

Your bug lacks information we would need to investigate further. We are now going to close the bug - please reopen if you have more information at hand.

I don't really know how to answer the question of "what version of Ubuntu". It was some combination of packages drawn from breezy and/or dapper during the dapper process. The version of the gdm package was 2.13.0.5-0ubuntu2.

I kind of feel like you aren't trying very hard to investigate the problem. Notice that when I installed gdm that it printed an error message to stderr saying that it can't grep a file named "/etc/X11/default-display-manager". Is it a requirement that such a file exist when you install gdm? If it is a requirement, then shouldn't the gdm package depend on a package that provides such a file? If it isn't a requirement, then shouldn't the attempt to grep the file be quietened? Wouldn't it be fairly quick to examine the install script and see what might go wrong if /etc/X11/default-display-manager doesn't exist?

I could attempt to reproduce this only by potentially destabilizing one of the systems that my family regularly uses, so I am reluctant to do so.

Let me put it this way:

1. the gdm package does not depend on any package which provides a file named "/etc/X11/default-display-manager".

2. the gdm package install script attempts to grep such a file

3. ipso facto: this is a bug, right? Or is there some unusual situation where it uses such a file if it exists, but it doesn't require such a file? If so, then the grep should be quietened.

P.S. As a long-term Free Software developer -- and a commercial software developer -- I am sympathetic to the problem of receiving bug reports which are insufficiently informative or which are irreproducible. I am doing my best to provide you with a useful bug report.

Setting this back to "Unconfirmed" -- I hope that is okay.

The issue is that we have thousands of bugs and very people working on them so we have to prioritize the work and don't usually spent hours trying to reproduce a bug if it's not a priority. Your issue seems to be local to your box (or we would have get other bugs about it) and easy to workaround so it's low priority at the moment.

Your bug is probably not due to "/etc/X11/default-display-manager", running the restart script with "set -x" for debug could be useful

"very few people working on them"

For reference, the text in 49134 was got on a fresh 6.06 desktop i386 install with a `apt-get upgrade'.

gdm's postinst has code like

    DEFAULT_DISPLAY_MANAGER_FILE=/etc/X11/default-display-manager
    case "$1" in
    configure)
        if grep "/usr/bin/gdm" $DEFAULT_DISPLAY_MANAGER_FILE; then
            echo "/usr/sbin/gdm" > $DEFAULT_DISPLAY_MANAGER_FILE
        fi
        ;;
    esac

which doesn't check /etc/X11/default-display-manager exists before grepping it.

Elsewhere, debian/* files do check /etc/X11/default-display-manager exists before reading it. debian/changelog says

gdm (2.8.0.0-0ubuntu1) breezy; urgency=low
  * debian/postinst:
    - update the gdm value for default-display-manager.
 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Wed, 15 Jun 2005 22:53:12 +0200

Confirming as at least part of the original problem, grep on non-existant file, exists.

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please answer these questions:

 * Is this reproducible?
 * If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?

 This will help us to find and resolve the problem.

We are closing this bug report as it lacks the information, described in the previous comments, we need to investigate the problem further. However, please reopen it if you can give us the missing information and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future.