upgrade fails: unable to open '/usr/share/backgrounds/greybird.svg.dpkg-new': No such file or directory

[anilsg]

Hi @ochosi - thanks for the new release of Greybird.

I find the following error when trying to upgrade from greybird-gtk-theme/focal,focal,now 3.22.12-0ubuntu1 all to 3.23.2-1~bpo20.04:
unable to open '/usr/share/backgrounds/greybird.svg.dpkg-new': No such file or directory.

I provided some dummy svg at that location but re-running the upgrade just removed the file that I provided and returned the same error.

It looks to me like there's a file expected in the archive that is missing.

Normally I would expect the upgrade to just complete, but it seems I'm now stuck at 3.22.12. I tried an apt reinstall but got the same error. I haven't tried to uninstall and install from fresh because I presume I'll just lose the installation with the same error.

Note I do have the following link installed, I'm not aware if this would cause a problem (but I've had the link for some time and it's never been a problem before):

$ ls -l /usr/share/backgrounds
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Aug  2  2021 /usr/share/backgrounds -> xfce4/backdrops/

I'm running Xfce 4.16 on Xubuntu 20.04.5 LTS (Focal Fossa).

$ sudo apt upgrade -y greybird-gtk-theme
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  greybird-gtk-theme
1 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 0 not to upgrade.
Need to get 0 B/585 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1,819 kB of additional disk space will be used.
(Reading database ... 371370 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../greybird-gtk-theme_3.23.2-1~bpo20.04_all.deb ...
Unpacking greybird-gtk-theme (3.23.2-1~bpo20.04) over (3.22.12-0ubuntu1) ...
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/greybird-gtk-theme_3.23.2-1~bpo20.04_all.deb (--unpack):
 unable to open '/usr/share/backgrounds/greybird.svg.dpkg-new': No such file or directory
No apport report written because the error message indicates an issue on the local system
                                                                                         Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/greybird-gtk-theme_3.23.2-1~bpo20.04_all.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

[anilsg]

Note that the "Software Updater" system (Xubuntu) gets the same error. I can see it flash up momentarily in the details dialogue while it's running the install, and the GUI comes back with "failed to install".