Can't upgrade from 14.10

[doctordruidphd]

Made the change in rc.shutdown you suggested. But if it's coming from some mystery source, it will probably get overwritten eventually.

Searching with dpkg shows no results for rc.shutdown; there isn't really any third party system software in there (as far as I know), and nothing I have compiled goes in /etc , so it is a bit of a mystery. No hints from the file itself:

#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          rc.local
# Required-Start:    $all
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:
# Short-Description: Run /etc/rc.local if it exist
### END INIT INFO


PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin

. /lib/init/vars.sh
. /lib/lsb/init-functions

do_start() {
        if [ -x /etc/rc.shutdown ]; then
                [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_begin_msg "Running local shutdown scripts (/etc/rc.shutdown)"
                /etc/rc.shutdown
                ES=$?
                [ "$VERBOSE" != no ] && log_end_msg $ES
                return $ES
        fi
}

case "$1" in
    start)
        do_start
        ;;
    restart|reload|force-reload)
        echo "Error: argument '$1' not supported" >&2
        exit 3
        ;;
    stop)
        ;;
    *)
        echo "Usage: $0 start|stop" >&2
        exit 3
        ;;
esac

[kubicle]

If you look at the script header:

#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: rc.local
# Required-Start: $all
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:
# Short-Description: Run /etc/rc.local if it exist
### END INIT INFO

It looks like whoever created it just copied rc.local initscript as rc.shutdown, and just edited it to run /etc/rc.shutdown instead of /etc/rc.local...but didn't bother to change the header lines (which messes up insserv, as it doesn't like that more than one script claims to provide the same service), because both "Provides" and "Short-Description" still point to rc.local. (So basically whoever wrote rc.shutdown didn't know what he/she was doing).

But if it's coming from some mystery source, it will probably get overwritten eventually.

If it would have come from a properly made (3rd party) package, the change should not be automatically overwritten (dpkg should preserve local changes on conffiles, or at least ask if you wish to overwrite). Since "dpkg -S" returned nothing, however, means that it does not come from any package, so it's a possibility the change will get overwritten if you repeat the circumstances how the file has crept into your machine (which is indeed a bit of a mystery)