Cannot update ca-certificates - ln: failed to create symbolic link '/etc/ssl/certs/.pem' -> '': No such file or directory

lslamp

10/5/23, 8:13 AM

Searching the forums I have found many links related to softlinks, but nothing related to the issue that I am facing. I have tried to run the the following command. apt upgrade -- I am looking to run the dist-upgrade from 20.04 to 22.04, but cannot get past this error.

apt upgrade 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 0 to remove and 0 not to upgrade.
1 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 
Setting up ca-certificates (20211016~20.04.1) ...
Updating certificates in /etc/ssl/certs...
ln: failed to create symbolic link '/etc/ssl/certs/.pem' -> '': No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing package ca-certificates (--configure):
 installed ca-certificates package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 ca-certificates
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I don't understand what link is trying to be created with the following line.

ln: failed to create symbolic link '/etc/ssl/certs/.pem' -> '': No such file or directory

It seems to be searching for a .pem file, there is no filename related to this.

I have also tried to run the following to no avail.

dpkg-reconfigure ca-certificates
/usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: ca-certificates is broken or not fully installed.

I ran this as well to remove the package.

dpkg -P --force-depends ca-certificates
(Reading database ... 180559 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing ca-certificates (20211016~20.04.1) ...
Removing dangling symlinks from /etc/ssl/certs... done.
Purging configuration files for ca-certificates (20211016~20.04.1) ...
Removing dangling symlinks from /etc/ssl/certs... done.
Processing triggers for man-db (2.9.1-1) ...

I have now run out of ideas and cannot find any ideas on the forums. Does anyone have any idea how I can fix this broken package

859

0 + 4

apt

certificates

muru

10/5/23, 8:22 AM

Is there a `/etc/ssl/certs/.pem` file? Try moving it elsewhere (or deleting if it's not necessary)

lslamp

10/5/23, 8:28 AM

@muru Thanks for the idea. I checked and there is no .pem file in the dir. What would happen if I move all the files out. Will they be recreated if I reinstall ca-certs I tried to move the verts directory away from the location and I still get the same error with the /etc/ssl/certs directory being empty.

lslamp

10/5/23, 10:55 AM

In the meantime I tried the following. I deleted all the content within the directory /etc/ssl/certs/. After deletion I ran the following command. dpkg-reconfigure ca-certificates I ran into the same error. I then looked into the /etc/ssl/certs dir and 129 links were created as follows USERTrust_ECC_Certification_Authority.pem -> /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/USERTrust_ECC_Certification_Authority.crt If this is the case and new softlinks were created, then the error makes no sense. Any ideas would be much appreciated. Lawrence

Andrew Lowther

10/7/23, 10:31 PM

try running `bash -x update-ca-certificates`. It will print each step in that bash script and should help debug whatever file is causing the broken `ln` command.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Cannot update ca-certificates - ln: failed to create symbolic link '/etc/ssl/certs/.pem' -> '': No such file or directory

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