Comment 55 for bug 637947

With the current version:

# apt-get install alsa-utils
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be upgraded:
  alsa-utils
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 4 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 1,107kB of archives.
After this operation, 4,096B of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports/ maverick-updates/main alsa-utils armel 1.0.23-2ubuntu3.4 [1,107kB]
Fetched 1,107kB in 0s (1,327kB/s)
(Reading database ... 103571 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace alsa-utils 1.0.23-2ubuntu3 (using .../alsa-utils_1.0.23-2ubuntu3.4_armel.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement alsa-utils ...
Processing triggers for ureadahead ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...

Setting up alsa-utils (1.0.23-2ubuntu3.4) ...
Found hardware: "SDP4430" "" "" "" ""
Hardware is initialized using a generic method
dpkg: error processing alsa-utils (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 99
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of ubuntu-netbook:
 ubuntu-netbook depends on alsa-utils; however:
  Package alsa-utils is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing ubuntu-netbook (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured

Errors were encountered while processing:
 alsa-utils
 ubuntu-netbook

This happens because the package tries to call alsactl init, and the config file expects the installed kernel to have both kernel patches posted at this bug, what is not the case when giving apt-get upgrade (the kernel update went on-line at the same time as the package update).

To fix this you basically need to call alsactl init only if the user already has the proper kernel installed and etc.