Comment 7 for bug 148806

Sorry, I managed to reproduce it by installing and then removing kcontrol again. and attach some useful info this time (hopefully!)

Also, devpts is mounted.
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)

Notable lines in the strace file:
3180ish to the end = Input/Output errors just before the read() hang

The last few lines for the impatient :)

select(28, [0 25 27], NULL, NULL, {1, 0}) = 1 (in [27], left {1, 0})
read(27, 0xbfd29078, 1024) = -1 EIO (Input/output error)
waitpid(16621, 0xbfd316c4, WNOHANG) = 0
---snip lots of these---
select(28, [0 25 27], NULL, NULL, {1, 0}) = 1 (in [27], left {1, 0})
read(27, 0xbfd29078, 1024) = ? ERESTARTSYS (To be restarted)
--- SIGCHLD (Child exited) @ 0 (0) ---
read(27,

here's a backtrace of apt-get on another `apt-get install kcontrol` (had to kill the one I got the strace from(
(gdb) bt
#0 0xffffe410 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
#1 0xb7d50cb3 in read () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
#2 0xb7f949d7 in pkgDPkgPM::DoTerminalPty () from /usr/lib/libapt-pkg-libc6.6-6.so.4.5
#3 0xb7f9a5ce in pkgDPkgPM::Go () from /usr/lib/libapt-pkg-libc6.6-6.so.4.5
#4 0xb7f46558 in pkgPackageManager::DoInstallPostFork () from /usr/lib/libapt-pkg-libc6.6-6.so.4.5
#5 0xb7f465dd in pkgPackageManager::DoInstall () from /usr/lib/libapt-pkg-libc6.6-6.so.4.5
#6 0x0805c2c8 in ?? ()
#7 0x08060eb2 in ?? ()
#8 0xb7f29b2b in CommandLine::DispatchArg () from /usr/lib/libapt-pkg-libc6.6-6.so.4.5
#9 0x0804ea1b in ?? ()
#10 0xb7ca3050 in __libc_start_main () from /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6
#11 0x0804cec1 in ?? ()
(gdb)

HTH, and feel free to let me know if there's any other info that would come in handy :)