[Aptitude-devel] Bug#795396: Bug#795396: Bug#795396: aptitude: DEBIAN_FRONTEND does not affect the debconf invoked by "aptitude

Wed Sep 9 12:26:26 UTC 2015

Control: reassign -1 debconf

Note for debconf maintainers: I am reassigning because this doesn't
seem to have anything to do with aptitude, so hopefully you will know
if this is a matter concerning debconf or hopefully could point in the
right direction.

2015-09-09 3:25 GMT+01:00 Karl O. Pinc <kop at meme.com>:
> On Mon, 7 Sep 2015 22:23:16 +0100
> "Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo" <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 2015-09-06 20:12 Karl O. Pinc:
>> >On Sun, 6 Sep 2015 16:15:56 +0100
>> >"Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo" <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> Also, what does happen if you use apt-get instead?
>> >
>> >I don't know.  It's not clear to me how to create
>> >a test environment to reproduce the problem.  It requires
>> >that an installed package get an update put into a repo
>> >and that the update makes changes to a user-modifed
>> >config file (right?) so that debconf is invoked when
>> >the update is installed.
>>
>> Perhaps it also work installing some package that you don't need, but
>> it is harmless, and know for sure that uses debconf?
>
> I don't think that installing is going to reproduce the
> problem -- it's on upgrade that debconf really wants
> to ask questions when a new config is incompatible with
> a user-modified config.

I see, I thought that it was happening with any debconf question,
that's why I thuoght that installing any new package would do.

> Per a suggestion on IRC #debian I tried (because I saw
> the problem with apache2):
>
> dpkg-i \
>  /var/cache/apt/archives/apache2_2.4.10-10+deb8u1_i386.deb \
>  /var/cache/apt/archives/apache2-bin_2.4.10-10+deb8u1_i386.deb \
>  /var/cache/apt/archives ^M/apache2-data_2.4.10-10+deb8u1_all.deb
>
> I believe this would get me back to the version which, on upgrade,
> I saw the problem.  But I could not reproduce the problem.
>
> My current apache2 version is: 2.4.10-10+deb8u3
>
> Note that the apache2 changelog says:
>
> apache2 (2.4.10-10+deb8u2) jessie; urgency=medium
>
>   [ Stefan Fritsch ]
>   * Fix upgrade logic: When upgrading from wheezy with apache2.2-common
>     but without apache2 installed to jessie, part of the conffile
>   handling logic would not run, causing outdated conffile content to be
>   kept. This is part of the solution for bug #794933. The other part
>   will be included in the upgrade to Debian 9 (stretch).
> <snip>
>  -- Stefan Fritsch <sf at debian.org>  Thu, 27 Aug 2015 19:52:37 +0200
>
> Seems to me that whatever fix was made to the upgrade logic
> is what triggered the problem, but that's a guess.
>
>
>> If you cannot test with the suggestion above, I think that it's better
>> to reassign to debconf package itself, let me know if you want me to
>> do this.
>
> Since I'm kinda stuck reproducing the problem I think you'd
> better reassign this to the debconf package.  Maybe they'll
> be able to help.

As I said above, reassigned now.

> For the sake of completeness I've found the log output
> which prompted this report.  It
> dates to: Sun,  2 Aug 2015 06:26:00 -0500 (CDT)
>
> (Now you know what the problem looks like.  :-)
>
> (FYI: Although aptitude is being invoked with --quiet=2
> it's outputting it's dynamic progress report.  A change
> from Wheezy and something I should put into another
> bug report.)

"Reading database" is a message from dpkg, not aptitude, and although
in some cases aptitude calls dpkg directly, I think that in this case
this call is made from apt (so the chain is aptitude->apt->dpkg).  We
do not have facilities to pass "verboseness/quietness" down the chain.

So to report this, dpkg is a better place, I think; I suppose that it
would better not print the progress when the terminal cannot handle
updating lines.

> ------------------------<snip>-------------------------
> The following packages will be upgraded:
>   apache2 apache2-bin apache2-data apache2-mpm-prefork apache2-utils
>   libicu52
> 6 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
> Need to get 8,384 kB of archives. After unpacking 7,168 B will be freed.
> (Reading database ...
> (Reading database ... 5%
> (Reading database ... 10%
> (Reading database ... 15%
> (Reading database ... 20%
> (Reading database ... 25%
> (Reading database ... 30%
> (Reading database ... 35%
> (Reading database ... 40%
> (Reading database ... 45%
> (Reading database ... 50%
> (Reading database ... 55%
> (Reading database ... 60%
> (Reading database ... 65%
> (Reading database ... 70%
> (Reading database ... 75%
> (Reading database ... 80%
> (Reading database ... 85%
> (Reading database ... 90%
> (Reading database ... 95%
> (Reading database ... 100%
> (Reading database ... 86260 files and directories currently installed.)
> Preparing to
> unpack .../apache2-mpm-prefork_2.4.10-10+deb8u1_amd64.deb ... Unpacking
> apache2-mpm-prefork (2.4.10-10+deb8u1) over (2.4.10-10) ... Preparing
> to unpack .../apache2_2.4.10-10+deb8u1_amd64.deb ... Unpacking apache2
> (2.4.10-10+deb8u1) over (2.4.10-10) ... Preparing to
> unpack .../apache2-bin_2.4.10-10+deb8u1_amd64.deb ... Unpacking
> apache2-bin (2.4.10-10+deb8u1) over (2.4.10-10) ... Preparing to
> unpack .../apache2-utils_2.4.10-10+deb8u1_amd64.deb ... Unpacking
> apache2-utils (2.4.10-10+deb8u1) over (2.4.10-10) ... Preparing to
> unpack .../apache2-data_2.4.10-10+deb8u1_all.deb ... Unpacking
> apache2-data (2.4.10-10+deb8u1) over (2.4.10-10) ... Preparing to
> unpack .../libicu52_52.1-8+deb8u2_amd64.deb ... Unpacking
> libicu52:amd64 (52.1-8+deb8u2) over (52.1-8) ... Processing triggers
> for systemd (215-17+deb8u1) ... Processing triggers for man-db
> (2.7.0.2-5) ... Setting up apache2-bin (2.4.10-10+deb8u1) ...
> Setting up apache2-utils (2.4.10-10+deb8u1) ...
> Setting up apache2-data (2.4.10-10+deb8u1) ...
> Setting up apache2 (2.4.10-10+deb8u1) ...
>
> Configuration file '/etc/apache2/ports.conf'
>  ==> Modified (by you or by a script) since installation.
>  ==> Package distributor has shipped an updated version.
>    What would you like to do about it ?  Your options are:
>     Y or I  : install the package maintainer's version
>     N or O  : keep your currently-installed version
>       D     : show the differences between the versions
>       Z     : start a shell to examine the situation
>  The default action is to keep your current version.
> *** ports.conf (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [default=N] ? dpkg: error processing
> package apache2 (--configure): EOF on stdin at conffile prompt
> dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of apache2-mpm-prefork:
>  apache2-mpm-prefork depends on apache2 (= 2.4.10-10+deb8u1); however:
>   Package apache2 is not configured yet.
>
> dpkg: error processing package apache2-mpm-prefork (--configure):
>  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
> Setting up libicu52:amd64 (52.1-8+deb8u2) ...
> Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.19-18) ...
> Errors were encountered while processing:
>  apache2
>  apache2-mpm-prefork
> E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
> Failed to perform requested operation on package.  Trying to recover:
> Setting up apache2 (2.4.10-10+deb8u1) ...
>
> Configuration file '/etc/apache2/ports.conf'
>  ==> Modified (by you or by a script) since installation.
>  ==> Package distributor has shipped an updated version.
>    What would you like to do about it ?  Your options are:
>     Y or I  : install the package maintainer's version
>     N or O  : keep your currently-installed version
>       D     : show the differences between the versions
>       Z     : start a shell to examine the situation
>  The default action is to keep your current version.
> *** ports.conf (Y/I/N/O/D/Z) [default=N] ? dpkg: error processing
> package apache2 (--configure): EOF on stdin at conffile prompt
> dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of apache2-mpm-prefork:
>  apache2-mpm-prefork depends on apache2 (= 2.4.10-10+deb8u1); however:
>   Package apache2 is not configured yet.
>
> dpkg: error processing package apache2-mpm-prefork (--configure):
>  dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
> Errors were encountered while processing:
>  apache2
>  apache2-mpm-prefork
> ------------------------<snip>-------------------------
>
> Regards,
>
> Karl <kop at meme.com>
> Free Software:  "You don't pay back, you pay forward."
>                  -- Robert A. Heinlein

Cheers.
-- 
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>