[Aptitude-devel] Bug#782777: Bug#782777: no more reproducible? (aptitude: marks certain packages as "new" and "not auto-installed" on every start of aptitude)

[Axel Beckert]

Hi,

Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
> On Sat, 2015-04-18 at 01:05 +0200, Axel Beckert wrote:
> > Christoph: Can you check if you can still reproduce the issue?
>
> I made an update, and checked again,... but the files still reappear as
> new and non-auto.

Thanks for checking.

I was about to tag that bug "confirmed" and "unpreproducible" at the
same time. But it's back again since today on the machine I yesterday
investigated the effect of downgrading apt to 1.0.9.7.

I currently assume that downgrading/upgrading to apt 1.0.9.7/1.0.9.8
doesn't immediately trigger it, but calling some commands (maybe
apt-get update via cron or playing around with apt-mark) is also
needed to change the state files accordingly which then trigger it.

A very strange (and surely annoying) issue. Will try to further
encircle it.

If someone else is reading this: I'd like to here if other people are
affected to see how widespread the issue is. I assume that only
systems where also experimental is present in the sources.list can be
affected, i.e. that this will not affect Jessie when released as
Stable (unless backports trigger it, too).

Regarding my own systems:

>From those three who are currently online and also have experimental,
only two show that symptom, interestingly with different packages.

My Sid-Thinkpad has the issue with the same packages as Chris.

My Testing-Server-VM (with experimental and sid in the sources.list,
too, but prefering testing) shows the issue with exactly one package
which is not mentioned so far:

--\ New Packages (1)
  --\ libs - Collections of software routines (1)
    --\ Debian (1)
      --\ experimental (1)
	--\ main - The main Debian archive (1)
	  --\ Priority standard (1)
p           libgnutls26   0   1.418 kB <none>   2.12.23-18

But neither my Sid-VM for development nor my Sid-EeePC show that
symptom, even not after "apt-get update". Nor do two pure Jessie
systems I've checked. So apt 1.0.9.8 plus running "apt-get update" is
not a sufficient condition for this issue

I.e. I've not yet found out, which conditions all must be met to
trigger the issue, but I suspect that the following conditions are at
least necessary:

* "experimental" in sources.list
* apt 1.0.9.8 installed and at least once used

Will continue to have an eye on that issue. Any further observations
which may lead to a further encircling of that issue are very welcome.

		Regards, Axel
--
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert <abe at debian.org>, http://people.debian.org/~abe/
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