[Aptitude-devel] Bug#762846: aptitude: Downloading changelogs fails with "Failed to download the changelog of …: Could not open file /tmp/aptitude-root.…:…/aptitudeDownload… - open (13: Permission denied) [IP: … 80]" as root since apt 1.1~exp3

[Axel Beckert]

Package: aptitude
Version: 0.6.11-1

With apt 1.1~exp3 from Debian Experimental installed, aptitude is no
more able to show downloaded changelogs temporarily when being called as
root:

# aptitude changelog dh-autoreconf
Err Changelog of dh-autoreconf
E: Changelog download failed: Could not open file /tmp/aptitude-root.16926:DkJnDf/aptitudeDownloaddH=t5-:ju5CZ9P,wwc211hbduMMVy5CW - open (13: Permission denied) [IP: 185.31.17.185 80]
Err Changelog of dh-autoreconf
E: Changelog download failed: Could not open file /tmp/aptitude-root.16926:DkJnDf/aptitudeDownloady=26TywAuyLtIgj3:oY-p6PB27S7j,xd - open (13: Permission denied) [IP: 185.31.17.184 80]
E: Couldn't find a changelog for dh-autoreconf
#

Happens in interactive mode, too, when pressing Shift-C. The error
message is then shown in the status line.

It still works fine as non-root user, though:

$ aptitude changelog dh-autoreconf
Get: Changelog of dh-autoreconf
$

Also "apt-get changelog dh-autoreconf" works fine, so this is not a
general issue in APT.

Reason is very likely that /tmp/aptitude-root.16926:DkJnDf/ belongs to
root and is only readable and writable by root while the downloading
backend likely runs under the new "_apt" user:

# ls -la /tmp/aptitude-root.16926:DkJnDf/
total 0
drwx------  2 root root   40 Sep 25 17:46 .
drwxrwxrwt 59 root root 1920 Sep 25 18:12 ..
#

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-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (990, 'unstable'), (600, 'testing'), (110, 'experimental'), (109, 'buildd-unstable'), (109, 'buildd-experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.16-trunk-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages aptitude depends on:
ii  aptitude-common           0.6.11-1
ii  libapt-pkg4.12            1.0.9.1
ii  libboost-iostreams1.55.0  1.55.0+dfsg-3
ii  libc6                     2.19-11
ii  libcwidget3               0.5.17-1
ii  libgcc1                   1:4.9.1-15
ii  libncursesw5              5.9+20140913-1
ii  libsigc++-2.0-0c2a        2.2.11-4
ii  libsqlite3-0              3.8.6-1
ii  libstdc++6                4.9.1-15
ii  libtinfo5                 5.9+20140913-1
ii  libxapian22               1.2.18-1.1

Versions of packages aptitude recommends:
ii  aptitude-doc-en [aptitude-doc]  0.6.11-1
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl   1.2.0-1.1
ii  sensible-utils                  0.0.9

Versions of packages aptitude suggests:
ii  apt-xapian-index  0.47
ii  debtags           1.12.1
ii  tasksel           3.26

-- no debconf information