[Aptitude-devel] Bug#910830: Downloading: gives up too soon on broken internet connection

[David Lawyer]

Package: aptitude
Version: 0.8.11-3
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,
I have a free dial-up connection to the inernet and do long (like
overnight) unattended downloads.  When the connection is lost my wvdial
program redials and a few minutes later reestablises a connection of my
computer with the internet.  But unfortunatly, by this time aptitude has
given up downloading and fails to utilize the restored connection.  Then
my computer spends hours doing nothing (unattended).  When a connection is
lost, aptititude should wait several minutes before giving up downloading.

My isp (Southern California Freenet) only provides surplus bandwidth free
and if it gets congested will drop non-paying users like me.  Thus
restoring broken connections is essential. Since not all other users
redial there is usually surplus bandwidth to use after freeloaders are
dropped so usually redialing works fine.  But aptitude stops working.

-- Package-specific info:
Terminal: linux
$DISPLAY not set.
which aptitude: /usr/bin/aptitude

aptitude version information:
aptitude 0.8.11
Compiler: g++ 8.2.0
Compiled against:
  apt version 5.0.2
  NCurses version 6.1
  libsigc++ version: 2.10.0
  Gtk+ support disabled.
  Qt support disabled.

Current library versions:
  NCurses version: ncurses 6.1.20180714
  cwidget version: 0.5.17
  Apt version: 5.0.2

aptitude linkage:
	linux-gate.so.1 (0xb7f46000)
	libapt-pkg.so.5.0 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libapt-pkg.so.5.0 (0xb78f0000)
	libncursesw.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libncursesw.so.6 (0xb78ae000)
	libtinfo.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.6 (0xb7886000)
	libsigc-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libsigc-2.0.so.0 (0xb787e000)
	libcwidget.so.3 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libcwidget.so.3 (0xb7771000)
	libsqlite3.so.0 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libsqlite3.so.0 (0xb764c000)
	libboost_iostreams.so.1.62.0 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libboost_iostreams.so.1.62.0 (0xb7630000)
	libboost_system.so.1.62.0 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libboost_system.so.1.62.0 (0xb762b000)
	libxapian.so.30 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/sse2/libxapian.so.30 (0xb73ea000)
	libpthread.so.0 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0xb73ca000)
	libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0xb7249000)
	libm.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0xb7146000)
	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb7128000)
	libc.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0xb6f4e000)
	libresolv.so.2 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libresolv.so.2 (0xb6f35000)
	libz.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0xb6f16000)
	libbz2.so.1.0 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libbz2.so.1.0 (0xb6f03000)
	liblzma.so.5 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/liblzma.so.5 (0xb6ed7000)
	liblz4.so.1 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/liblz4.so.1 (0xb6eb8000)
	libzstd.so.1 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libzstd.so.1 (0xb6e1f000)
	libudev.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1 (0xb6dfd000)
	/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7f48000)
	libdl.so.2 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0xb6df5000)
	librt.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/librt.so.1 (0xb6deb000)
	libuuid.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libuuid.so.1 (0xb6de1000)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 4.18.0-1-686-pae (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages aptitude depends on:
ii  aptitude-common           0.8.11-3
ii  libapt-pkg5.0             1.6.4
ii  libboost-iostreams1.62.0  1.62.0+dfsg-10
ii  libboost-system1.62.0     1.62.0+dfsg-10
ii  libc6                     2.27-6
ii  libcwidget3v5             0.5.17-11
ii  libgcc1                   1:8.2.0-6
ii  libncursesw6              6.1+20180714-1
ii  libsigc++-2.0-0v5         2.10.0-2.1
ii  libsqlite3-0              3.24.0-1
ii  libstdc++6                8.2.0-6
ii  libtinfo6                 6.1+20180714-1
ii  libxapian30               1.4.7-2

Versions of packages aptitude recommends:
pn  libparse-debianchangelog-perl  <none>
ii  sensible-utils                 0.0.12

Versions of packages aptitude suggests:
pn  apt-xapian-index                <none>
ii  aptitude-doc-en [aptitude-doc]  0.8.11-3
pn  debtags                         <none>
pn  tasksel                         <none>

-- no debconf information