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I am repeatedly getting this message: 

Setting up apt-listchanges (3.10) ...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/tmp/tmp.aulCeycFHm.aptlc/debconf-helper.py", line 6, in <module>
    import debconf
ImportError: No module named 'debconf'
dpkg: error processing package apt-listchanges (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.6.1-2) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 apt-listchanges

debconf

~$ dpkg --status debconf
Package: debconf
Status: install ok installed
Priority: required
Section: admin
Installed-Size: 558
Maintainer: Debconf Developers <[email protected]>
Architecture: all
Multi-Arch: foreign
Version: 1.5.60
Replaces: debconf-tiny
Provides: debconf-2.0
Pre-Depends: perl-base (>= 5.6.1-4)
Recommends: apt-utils (>= 0.5.1), debconf-i18n
Suggests: debconf-doc, debconf-utils, whiptail | dialog, libterm-readline-gnu-perl, libgtk2-perl (>= 1:1.130), libnet-ldap-perl, perl, libqtgui4-perl, libqtcore4-perl
Conflicts: apt (<< 0.3.12.1), cdebconf (<< 0.96), debconf-tiny, debconf-utils (<< 1.3.22), dialog (<< 0.9b-20020814-1), menu (<= 2.1.3-1), whiptail (<< 0.51.4-11), whiptail-utf8 (<= 0.50.17-13)
Conffiles:
 /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/70debconf 7e9d09d5801a42b4926b736b8eeabb73
 /etc/debconf.conf 8c0619be413824f1fc7698cee0f23811
Description: Debian configuration management system
 Debconf is a configuration management system for debian packages. Packages
 use Debconf to ask questions when they are installed.

ls -l /usr/lib/python*/dist-packages/debconf.py

ls -l /usr/lib/python*/dist-packages/debconf.py
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4
  • Have you successfully used apt-listchanges before? Have you configured or reconfigured it? Look at jxf.me/entries/better-apt-ubuntu --- scroll down to: Using apt-listchanges Commented May 18, 2017 at 17:22
  • Please add the output of the dpkg --status debconf and ls -l /usr/lib/python*/dist-packages/debconf.py commands to your question. Commented May 19, 2017 at 9:58
  • Do you have 'debconf' & 'debconf-utils' installed? Commented May 19, 2017 at 14:10
  • I have added the printouts from those commands. I have debconf and I now have debconf-utils. Commented May 22, 2017 at 17:24

2 Answers 2

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5

This may not be important to you anymore, but I figured out a workaround, at least for me.

The problem is that it can't find debconf.py on your path. In my case it was using a different python with different settings than what was normally on my path.

I eventually found a debconf.py file in /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/debconf.py. For me, it was python3.6 that had the wrong path, which you can find by doing:

$ python3.6
>>> import sys
>>> sys.path

Which showed me that it didn't have what was on my $PATH. Rather than muck around too much, I just ran this:

# ln -s /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/debconf.py /usr/local/lib/python3.6/site-packages

The destination can be anywhere that shows up in that sys.path. You could probably copy instead of symlink. Regardless, That's what I did and it worked for me - I hope you have similar luck!

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1

I started getting this error when I upgraded my computation server from Debian jessie to Debian stretch.

My problem was that I had (foolishly) manually installed Python 3.5 system-wide before the upgrade to stretch, and that version of Python was 'masking' the default stretch Python 3 install. In particular, these factors were at play:

  • My manual v3.5 install had put its python3 symlink into /usr/local/bin

  • The Debian python3 system package had installed symlinks into /usr/bin

  • /usr/local/bin was earlier in my $PATH than was /usr/bin

So, to fix this specific problem, all I had to do was rename the /usr/local/bin/python3 symlink to, e.g., /usr/local/bin/python3-local, and then import debconf worked fine after a python3 invocation.

A more complete solution would probably be a total uninstall of the system-wide manual version of Python 3.5, and re-installing it sandboxed.

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