[Bug 1853977] Re: nvidia-340 dpkg: error: version '-' has bad syntax: revision number is empty

This is a stupid uninitialized variable error in the postinstall script:

case "$1" in
configure)
# Added manually, since we mangled the arguments, and dpkg-maintscript-helper
# won't work
if [ -n "$2" ] && `dpkg --compare-versions "$2" lt "340.106-0ubuntu5"`; then
rm -f /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-340.conf
fi
CURRENT_KERNEL=$(uname -r)
NEWEST_KERNEL=$(get_newest_kernel "$KERNELS")

Variable "KERNELS" is not defined, so when get_newest_kernel tries to
use dpkg to look up the kernel version it fails.

Defining "KERNELS" to be CURRENT_KERNEL allows the configure to work:

case "$1" in
configure)
# Added manually, since we mangled the arguments, and dpkg-maintscript-helper
# won't work
if [ -n "$2" ] && `dpkg --compare-versions "$2" lt "340.106-0ubuntu5"`; then
rm -f /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-340.conf
fi
CURRENT_KERNEL=$(uname -r)
KERNELS=$CURRENT_KERNEL
NEWEST_KERNEL=$(get_newest_kernel "$KERNELS")

Seriously - this has been an issue for over a year, and nobody bothered
to look into it?

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1853977

Title:
nvidia-340 dpkg: error: version '-' has bad syntax: revision number is
empty

Status in linux package in Ubuntu:
Incomplete
Status in nvidia-graphics-drivers package in Ubuntu:
Confirmed

Bug description:
Hello,

When installing `nvidia-340` there is an error is the postinst script:

philippe@pv-desktop:~$ sudo apt install --reinstall nvidia-340
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
0 to upgrade, 0 to newly install, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 7 not to upgrade.
Need to get 0 B/51.9 MB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
(Reading database ... 309892 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../nvidia-340_340.107-0ubuntu0.18.04.4_amd64.deb ...
Stopping nvidia-persistenced
nvidia-persistenced: no process found
Done.
(snip)
Setting up nvidia-340 (340.107-0ubuntu0.18.04.4) ...
dpkg: error: version '-' has bad syntax: revision number is empty
dpkg: error: version '-' has bad syntax: revision number is empty
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
INFO:Enable nvidia-340
DEBUG:Parsing /usr/share/ubuntu-drivers-common/quirks/put_your_quirks_here
DEBUG:Parsing /usr/share/ubuntu-drivers-common/quirks/lenovo_thinkpad
DEBUG:Parsing /usr/share/ubuntu-drivers-common/quirks/dell_latitude
Loading new nvidia-340-340.107 DKMS files...
Building for 4.15.0-70-generic
Building for architecture x86_64
Building initial module for 4.15.0-70-generic
Done.

The comment at https://askubuntu.com/questions/969352/uninstalling-
and-then-reinstalling-nvidia-384-kills-colord tells us that
/var/lib/dpkg/info/nvidia-340.postinst has a typo: replace $KERNELS
with $CURRENT_KERNEL then `dpkg-reconfigure nvidia-340` works as
expected.

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