Comment 5 for bug 249340

I just ran into the same problem a few hours ago. Google brought me to the same sources as quoted above. "Compiling" the collected information, here is a work-around that did it for me (step-by-step - so everybody can solve it until the bug is fixed):

run the dist-upgrade as recommended. If the process hangs at generating locales, taking more than 20min for the first one and still not continuing:

chmod 644 /usr/bin/localedef
killall locale-gen

now the process should continue, but throwing a bunch of errors (simply ignore those). If it still not continues, check whether locale-gen has really been killed (ps aux|grep locale-gen) and repeat "killall locale-gen" until it's gone.

When update-manager is done, don't forget to

chmod 755 /usr/bin/localedef

For me, update-manager seemed to be able to finally solve the issue, there have been no more steps required after the above. But just to be sure:

Reboot to the normal grub option offered (i.e. the latest kernel just installed), but do not yet login graphically. Instead, press Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get a text console. Login there, and run

apt-get dist-upgrade
dpkg --configure -a

As just stated, in my case both were done within a second, simply stating there was nothing to do. Now you can logout here (type "exit" or press Ctrl-D), return to the graphical console (Alt-F7), and login. You are done.

Besides: I was really mad that the dist-upgrade forced me to install OpenOffice. I had it explicitly uninstalled, since it conflicts with StarOffice which I prefer. Luckily, I was able to simply uninstall OO again and there have been no side-effects left as far as I can tell up to now. The dist-upgrade should not just install stuff like that if it was not installed...