apt-get upgrade fails because of some dependency loop

Question

If I update my Raspberry PI with:

sudo apt-get upgrade

I run into follwoing dependency errors:

lighttpd (1.4.31-4+deb7u3) wird eingerichtet ...
insserv: warning: script 'mathkernel' missing LSB tags and overrides
insserv: There is a loop between service watchdog and mathkernel if stopped
insserv:  loop involving service mathkernel at depth 2
insserv:  loop involving service watchdog at depth 1
insserv: Stopping mathkernel depends on watchdog and therefore on system facility `$all' which can not be true!
insserv: exiting now without changing boot order!
update-rc.d: error: insserv rejected the script header
dpkg: Fehler beim Bearbeiten von lighttpd (--configure):
 Unterprozess installiertes post-installation-Skript gab den Fehlerwert 1 zurück


update-rc.d: error: insserv rejected the script header
dpkg: Fehler beim Bearbeiten von watchdog (--configure):
Unterprozess installiertes post-installation-Skript gab den Fehlerwert 1    zurück
Fehler traten auf beim Bearbeiten von:
lighttpd
mediatomb-daemon
mediatomb
minissdpd
watchdog
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

How can I fix this?

Answer 1

The mathkernel module is included by the wolfram-engine. I removed that package and the dependecy Errors on a apt-get upgrade disappers.

 sudo apt-get remove wolfram-engine
 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get upgrade

Answer 2

It looks like you've installed something that added /etc/init.d/mathkernel which isn't correctly formatted for Debian. When it tries to run upgrades it wants to stop the process, but it can't do that automatically because it's non-standard. You might able to get around this by making sure the script has a line reading . /lib/lsb/init-functions somewhere near the top. Try comparing it's formatting to some of the other /etc/init.d/* scripts. It's also possible that the file's been corrupted, it may be worth re-installing it from the original source.