[Aptitude-devel] Bug#814408: aptitude uses all disk space (12G) with recursive trace-dump in /tmp

[Chris Tillman]

Sorry, I guess filling disk is not such a bad thing after all. "Everyone
else does it."

Disregard my sarcasm, you are of course right that the system is now
designed to
withstand such poorly behaved applications.

I also thought configs were usually attached by reportbug, but in any case
here is

$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ftp.citylink.co.nz/debian/ testing main non-free contrib
deb-src http://ftp.citylink.co.nz/debian/ testing main non-free contrib

deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free

# jessie-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://ftp.citylink.co.nz/debian/ jessie-updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.citylink.co.nz/debian/ jessie-updates main contrib
non-free


$ cat ~/.aptitude/config
Aptitude "";
Aptitude::ProblemResolver "";
Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Trace-File "/tmp/aptitude.trace";
Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Remove-Level "10001";

I also attached the tarred remainder of the offending aptitude-trace
directory in tmp. (Recall I had truncated the recursive directory at
aptitude-trace-dumpubvton/usr/bin/X11/X11/X11/X11/X11 ).

After removing the
Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Trace-File "/tmp/aptitude.trace";
line, I went back in to aptitude to try the same thing again.

Upon starting, it immediately suggested 2 installs, 1 keep, 1 upgrade.
Remember I had cancelled the pending actions. This action was not suggested
last time I was in.
keep: libilmbase6v5
install: libilmbase12, libopenexr22
upgrade: libgeg-0.3-0

I entered ! to accept the suggestion, and verified that these actions are
now pending, along with removal of libopenexr6v5 (libilmbase6v5 is also
being removed because no longer used).

I also have a list of 34 packages being held back, including apt and
apt-utils at 1.2.1. And 96 being automatically held, the list of which
includes many xserver-xorg packages (and xserver-xorg-legacy at 2:1.173-2).

I tried hitting + on the Upgradeable line again, and this time the
resolution was swift: Suggest 23 keeps. This was all the xserver-xorg
packages again. I accepted. I hit the + sign again, and the same suggestion
was offered again.

I think that must be where the recursiveness is coming in.

Let me know if there's something else I can try in this state.



On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 12:57 AM, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <
manuel.montezelo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Control: severity -1 minor
>
>
> Hi,
>
> 2016-02-11 10:00 Chris Tillman:
>
>> Package: aptitude
>> Version: 0.7.5-3
>> Severity: critical
>> Justification: breaks unrelated software
>>
>
> This is not a critical bug by any strectch, anymore than wget or any
> browser might break unrelated software if you download a partition
> without enough space (when other packages depend on empty space in that
> partition to work fine).  Many packages use /tmp and can cause this
> problem under various circumstances, even with much smaller files.
>
> Simply downloading files in aptitude for an upgrade can fill up
> /var/cache/apt/archives, which might mean / and /tmp if it's a single
> partition, and aptitude never stopped to be released because of that
> behaviour.
>
> There is a simple workaround for that, I suspect, which is to use the
> defaults and not enable options related with trace-dumps.
>
> It would be useful though if you could mention the exact config or
> command line options that you enabled to make this happen.
>
>
> Cheers.
> --
> Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>
>



-- 
Chris Tillman
Developer
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