Bug#600571: perl: Fails to complete unpack during installation

[Niko Tyni]

tag 600571 unreproducible
thanks

On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 10:33:57AM +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
> Package: perl
> Version: 5.10.1-15
> Severity: serious
> Justification: Breaks installation
> 
> While dist-upgrading my system today, the perl package failed to unpack/configure 
> (transcript below) and hung for over an hour until I killed the dpkg process.  After 
> running "dpkg --configure -a" and "apt-get -f install" the package then continued to 
> configure correctly.  It looks like it was somehow stuck between unpacking and 
> configuring.  There was no response in the terminal to any keys (I tried hitting enter, 
> but there was no response to the input, so maybe apt-get was doing something odd with 
> termios if this wasn't a deliberate action by the perl maintainer scripts).
> 
> Looking as the ps listing (below), it looks like dpkg was being run on pts/2 which 
> wasn't an open pty in any virtual terminal while apt-get was run on pts/1.  That's not 
> typical, and may be the cause of the problem if perl was waiting on input due to a 
> conffile change or debconf interaction.  The ps listing doesn't indicate any debconf 
> usage though.
> 
> I'm afraid I can't give much more detail about the issue.  This may well not be a 
> perl-specific bug if perl's pre/postinst isn't doing any messing with ptys.  In this 
> case, it may be a bug in apt-get and/or dpkg.

This is very weird. No, the maintainer scripts of the perl package
certainly don't mess with ptys in any way and actually do nothing at
the unpack stage of an upgrade. There are no conffiles and no debconf
usage either.

It looks like the different ptys for dpkg and apt-get are normal behaviour
for apt-get.

I take it /var/log/apt/term.log and /var/log/dpkg.log don't give any clues?

How did you obtain the process listing? Is it possible that it's missing
some maintainer script processes forked by dpkg?

The package seems to work for other people (10 days in unstable without
other reports) and the changes in 5.10.1-15 seem unlikely to cause
something like this.

My best guess is that this is either a problem with your system or some
corner case in apt-get / dpkg interaction but this is all just handwaving.

Tagging as unreproducible, let's wait a while for any other reports. The
package just migrated to squeeze so there should be plenty of people
upgrading in the next few days.
-- 
Niko Tyni   ntyni at debian.org