[Aptitude-devel] Bug#960562: Bug#960562: had to reinstall a package to avoid 'bullying'

[Axel Beckert]

Control: tag -1 + unreproducible moreinfo

Hi,

Sven Joachim wrote:
> On 2020-05-14 06:48 +0800, 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson wrote:
> 
> > Package: aptitude
> > Version: 0.8.12-3
> >
> > Odd, today I had to reinstall a package to get aptitude to stop trying
> > to get rid of it.
> 
> The package in question has been marked as automatically installed and
> there are no longer any reverse dependencies.

Yep, the "u" in "{pu}" hints that, so that's also my suspicion.

Unfortunately the bug report doesn't provide that information. And Dan
probably hasn't called aptitude-create-state-bundle before forcefully
fixing the situation. That oesn't leave a chance to investigate this
properly, i.e. we might never know what really caused it. :-/

> The easiest way to keep it would be "aptitude unmarkauto fdisk".

Correct.

> > # aptitude install fdisk
> > fdisk is already installed at the requested version (2.35.1-5)
> > fdisk is already installed at the requested version (2.35.1-5)
> > The following packages will be REMOVED:
> >   fdisk{pu}

Point is, I can't reproduce it:

# aptitude markauto zsh-dbgsym
# aptitude install zsh-dbgsym
zsh-dbgsym is already installed at the requested version (5.8-4)
zsh-dbgsym is already installed at the requested version (5.8-4)
No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 13 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.
# aptitude show zsh-dbgsym
Package: zsh-dbgsym
Version: 5.8-4
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
[...]

Same with fdisk:

# aptitude markauto fdisk
# aptitude install fdisk
fdisk is already installed at the requested version (2.35.1-5)
fdisk is already installed at the requested version (2.35.1-5)
No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 13 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 0 B will be used.
# aptitude show fdisk
Package: fdisk
Version: 2.35.1-5
State: installed
Automatically installed: yes
[...] 

The only thing I currently can't explain is why this once results in
"Automatically installed: no" and once in "Automatically installed:
yes".

Since I have a non-standard aptitude config, I also tried in a clean
pbuilder chroot:

# apt install fdisk
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  fdisk libfdisk1
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 416 kB of archives.
After this operation, 1063 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://debian.ethz.ch/debian sid/main amd64 libfdisk1 amd64 2.35.1-5 [231 kB]
Get:2 http://debian.ethz.ch/debian sid/main amd64 fdisk amd64 2.35.1-5 [184 kB]
Fetched 416 kB in 0s (3948 kB/s)
debconf: delaying package configuration, since apt-utils is not installed
Selecting previously unselected package libfdisk1:amd64.
(Reading database ... 13343 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../libfdisk1_2.35.1-5_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking libfdisk1:amd64 (2.35.1-5) ...
Selecting previously unselected package fdisk.
Preparing to unpack .../fdisk_2.35.1-5_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking fdisk (2.35.1-5) ...
Setting up libfdisk1:amd64 (2.35.1-5) ...
Setting up fdisk (2.35.1-5) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.30-8) ...
# aptitude markauto fdisk
# aptitude install fdisk
fdisk is already installed at the requested version (2.35.1-5)
fdisk is already installed at the requested version (2.35.1-5)
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libfdisk1{u}
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 549 kB will be freed.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 fdisk : Depends: libfdisk1 (>= 2.33) but it is not going to be installed
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

     Keep the following packages at their current version:
1)     libfdisk1 [2.35.1-5 (now, unstable)]



Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?]

Now this is even more confusing (still kinda explainable), but still
not the same.

> There might be some arguments for "aptitude install <package>" to clear
> the automatic flag

Unsure, see above. I thought though, too, that it does not change the
flag.

> (IIRC apt and apt-get do that),

Correct. (And I'm annoyed by that behaviour.)

The only way I could reproduce this was to install it and saying in
the same command to mark it as automatically installed:

# aptitude install zsh-dbgsym\&M
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  zsh-dbgsym{u}
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 13 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 2066 kB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]
  
>From numerous other bug reports I know that Dan has a quite unique
aptitude configuration. (Also can be seen by the "p" in "{pu}" as that
indicates that Aptitude::Purge-Unused is being set.)

So my only explanation so far is that he has something in his aptitude
or apt configuration which makes fdisk marked as automatically
installed. Potential candidate for such a thing are

* APT::Move-Autobit-Sections::
* APT::AutoRemove::RecommendsImportant (when set to false)
* APT::AutoRemove::SuggestsImportant (when set to false)
* Aptitude::Keep-Recommends (when set to false)
* Aptitude::Keep-Suggests (when set to false)

I though was not able to find a combination of these and
Aptitude::Purge-Unused to provoke this behaviour either.

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