"at" package could not be installed during kubuntu upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10 beta

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Could you please add the log files from '/var/log/dist-upgrade/' to this bug report as attachments? Thanks in advance.

Adding log files as requested

second log file apt-term.log - this log file is empty and won't attach

third log file

fourth log file

The four log files attached are:

apt.log
apt-term.log (empty so wouldn't attach)
main.log
term.log

From term.log:

Setting up at (3.1.10.1ubuntu3) ...
Installing new version of config file /etc/init.d/atd ...
 * Starting deferred execution scheduler atd
invoke-rc.d: initscript atd, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error processing at (--configure):
 subprocess post-installation script returned error exit status 1

Could you please include the output of 'ls -l /var/spool/cron/'? This bug may be related to bug 251482.

Here is the requested cron output:

ron@ubuntu:~$ ls -l /var/spool/cron
total 12
drwxrwx--T 2 daemon daemon 4096 2008-04-22 15:27 atjobs
drwxrwx--T 2 daemon daemon 4096 2007-02-20 06:41 atspool
drwx-wx--T 2 root crontab 4096 2008-04-08 12:02 crontabs

I can confirm I get the same error.

I looked at my /var/spool/cron:

ls -l /var/spool/cron
total 3
drwxrwx--T 2 bin bin 1024 2007-06-21 10:10 atjobs
drwxrwx--T 2 daemon daemon 1024 2008-07-10 11:01 atspool
drwx-wx--T 2 root crontab 1024 2008-10-17 23:28 crontabs

Notice that atjobs has owner as bin/bin. I changed this to daemon:daemon:

sudo chown daemon:daemon /var/spool/cron/atjobs

Then I was able to configure at, ubuntu-standard and lsb-core.

I don't know what changed the permissions, but they may be the same as an old bug reported:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/279395

Now things seem to be working!

A possibly related debian bug report appears at http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=65071, however it seems to have been resolved with 3.1.9 which was first available in dapper.

I got the same as gloonie but atjobs and atspool were both owned by bin:bin.

Same fix worked for me:

sudo chown daemon:daemon /var/spool/cron/atjobs
sudo chown daemon:daemon /var/spool/cron/atspool

Now atd runs OK:

root@slippy:~# /etc/init.d/atd start
 * Starting deferred execution scheduler atd [ OK ]
root@slippy:~# /etc/init.d/atd status
 * atd is running

Incidentally, I'm wondering if this is the same bug as bug 158178. If it isn't, I'm not sure which one is the one I'm seeing...