Process hanging while upgrading remotely to 8.04

Binary package hint: update-manager

During remote upgrade gzip was hung several times, the pstree of such a situation is shown below:

gksu(5784)───hardy(5796)─hardy(5844)───dpkg(22069)───language-suppor(15121)───install-languag(15122)───locale-gen(15123)───locale-gen(15136)───localedef(15165)───gzip(15166)

the upgrade would not proceed any further unless the locale-gen process lower in the tree was manually killed.

At the end of the upgrade the following error messages were shown:

----------------------
Errors were encountered while processing:

 locales
 language-pack-en-base
 language-pack-en
 language-pack-gnome-en-base
 language-pack-gnome-en
 sun-java6-jre
 sun-java6-bin
 sun-java6-plugin
 ubuntu-minimal

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "logging/__init__.py", line 753, in emit
    self.flush()
  File "logging/__init__.py", line 731, in flush
    self.stream.flush()
IOError: [Errno 9] Bad file descriptor
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "logging/__init__.py", line 753, in emit
    self.flush()
  File "logging/__init__.py", line 731, in flush
    self.stream.flush()
IOError: [Errno 9] Bad file descriptor
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "logging/__init__.py", line 753, in emit
    self.flush()
  File "logging/__init__.py", line 731, in flush
    self.stream.flush()
IOError: [Errno 9] Bad file descriptor
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)
** Message: GetValue variable 1 (1)
** Message: GetValue variable 2 (2)

-----------------------
 The upgrade is hung and most likely the machine is now corrupted.

Description: Ubuntu 8.04.1
Release: 8.04

ProblemType: Package
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Jul 16 12:52:34 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
ErrorMessage: ErrorMessage: SystemError in cache.commit(): E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: update-manager 1:0.87.27
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: update-manager
Title: package update-manager 1:0.87.27 failed to install/upgrade: ErrorMessage: SystemError in cache.commit(): E:Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
Uname: Linux 2.6.22-15-generic i686