[Pkg-fonts-devel] Bug#722299: cat: /etc/X11/fonts/misc/xfonts-wqy.alias: Is a directory

[Russ Allbery]

Control: reassign -1 xfonts-wqy
Control: severity -1 important

jidanni at jidanni.org writes:

> Package: xfonts-jmk

> Preparing to replace xfonts-jmk 3.0-19 (using .../xfonts-jmk_3.0-20_all.deb) ...
> Unpacking replacement xfonts-jmk ...
> cat: /etc/X11/fonts/misc/xfonts-wqy.alias: Is a directory

>   /etc/X11/fonts/misc:
>   total used in directory 64 available 380550804
>   drwxr-xr-x 3 root  4096 09-10 02:22 .
>   drwxr-xr-x 7 root  4096 2013-01-22  ..
>   -rw-r--r-- 1 root  6270 2010-11-17  xfonts-base.alias
>   -rw-r--r-- 1 root  3141 2009-12-30  xfonts-efont-unicode-ib.alias
>   -rw-r--r-- 1 root  1067 2009-12-30  xfonts-efont-unicode.alias
>   -rw-r--r-- 1 root 13124 2010-04-03  xfonts-jmk.alias
>   -rw-r--r-- 1 root 19731 2011-05-18  xfonts-terminus.alias
>   drwxr-xr-x 2 root  4096 2013-01-22  xfonts-wqy.alias

The error message is from update-fonts-dir, which is processing the whole
directory during postinst and is running into a bad file in the xfonts-wqy
package.  Reassigning accordingly.

xfonts-wqy maintainer,

Something has gone wrong with the install rules in your package, causing
you to ship a file named:

    /etc/X11/fonts/misc/xfonts-wqy.alias/fonts.alias

Based on the pattern of problem, I suspect that you are using dh_install
and have a rule like:

    fonts.alias /etc/X11/fonts/misc/xfongs-wqy.alias

and were under the assumption that dh_install would rename the file for
you.  However, that doesn't work; dh_install always treats the right-hand
side as a directory and will create the directory if needed.  You need to
either rename fonts.alias before installing it or install it manually in
debian/rules using some method other than dh_install.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra at debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>