Frustrating update abberation

[kk6rq]

I have 2 virtually identical ASL nodes (except for the node numbers and perhaps the IAX ports);
One of them suddenly started choking on update/upgrades a week and a half ago. It always hangs trying to install that exim4 base thing:

It gives me:
E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.

But that just hangs with this:
root@node27277:/home/bobby# sudo dpkg --configure -a
Setting up exim4-base (4.96-15+deb12u7) ...
exim4-base.service is a disabled or a static unit not running, not starting it.

(then it just hangs, whether normal user+sudo, root, root +sudo [I know, redundant], etc.)

Any suggestions to try/post..? (and what's happening, exactly? Looks like something to do w/mail...)

[Mike]

While I am not going to be much help,
I can tell you the exim package is a email handler much like postfix.
Perhaps that tells you something that you may have installed ?

I can't remember the syntax with debian since I run centos on my webservers,
I think it is apt purge exim4 / sudo apt purge exim4

Perhaps that will get you past it. You might want to reboot after to be sure there are no residuals in memory.

I just did a check on my asl3 install and exim seems to be part of the default OS install.
So, perhaps you can look at the logs for it and see what gives, and re-install if you need to.
But unless you are using the system for email or email smart relay, I can't see it's need.

[N8EI]

Likely something corrupted/broke an update on your node. It's possible you have SD Card corruption if it's a Pi. Try these commands one at a time:

apt remove -y exim4-base
apt purge -y exim4-base exim4-daemon-light
apt install --reinstall exim4-daemon-light

[kk6rq]

Well, that appears to have fixed it in the end; I first ran each command, individually, as you said; the first two completed successfully but the 3rd hung with the same error as earlier:

exim4-base.service is a disabled or a static unit not running, not starting it.

I then accidently ran all three together and it seems to be all good now....WTF...

I rebooted and ran an update again to double-check; now the system seems to be zen again. Thanks, though I'm a bit confused...