Comment 3 for bug 208874

I got this same error while upgrading from Gutsy to Hardy with the Update Manager. Now my machine is in a complete mess, X can not start anymore, disks are not mounted, etc, etc...

I did an update of Gutsy (with Update Manager) before I did this upgrade to Hardy.

After this error I got about 30 more errors that other modules could not be installed due to dependency problems. Even 'linux-image-2.6.24.16.generic' failed (sounds pretty essential to me...)

I have attached my term.log file for further inspection.

I had a peek in there, the part where the module-init-tools went wrong was:

Setting up module-init-tools (3.3-pre11-4ubuntu5) ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/modprobe.d/arch/i386 ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist ...
dpkg-divert: rename involves overwriting `/sbin/insmod' with
  different file `/sbin/insmod.modutils', not allowed
dpkg: error processing module-init-tools (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 2
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of acpid:
 acpid depends on module-init-tools (>= 3.1-rel-2ubuntu2); however:
  Package module-init-tools is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing acpid (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured

I also had a peek at /sbin/insmod* and this is what ls -l says:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5740 2008-02-25 22:20 /sbin/insmod
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 2007-05-02 19:12 /sbin/insmod.modutils

as you can see the modutils file is empty, I am no expert so I don't know if that is a problem but I thought I mention it.

I would say this has a pretty high importance because I used the average-user upgrade tools and my machine is totally useless after the upgrade.

-Tom