[Aptitude-devel] Bug#668912: Bug#668912: aptitude marks random packages are manually installed.

[David Kalnischkies]

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 3:21 AM, Mark Lodato <lodatom at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have this same problem.  Packages randomly appear as manually
> installed.  This annoys me so much that I have set up a script to
> monitor this.

For the record: Packages listed in this file are marked as auto-installed
(Auto-Installed: 1). Packages not listed or with Auto-Installed: 0 are marked
as manual. So what you say here is that packages are randomly marked
as automatic, not as manual. That is a big difference.
(Packages which were auto and are later marked as manual will disappear
 from this file as it is the default.)

General hint:
You can find backups of the extended_state file in /var/backup. A deep
look into /var/log/apt/history.log should tell you what you have run.

Daniel, maybe it has something to do with apt/apt-pkg/depcache.cc 1034ff.
I will have a look if this happens with apt, too, but I haven't seen it so
far, so this would be my best guess, if it is not buried inside aptitude.

Best regards

David Kalnischkies