Bug#905774: jackd2: jackd no longer starts, since device is already in use; but who's using it?

[Francesco Poli]

On Thu, 09 Aug 2018 17:38:54 +0200 Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

> Quoting Francesco Poli (2018-08-09 16:04:07)
[...]
> > I still have to understand why I had timidity-daemon installed on that 
> > box: aptitude logs show that it had been there since long ago (the 
> > oldest log shows an UPGRADE, rather than an INSTALL), but I am sure I 
> > have never installed it manually. Indeed it was marked as 
> > automatically installed, but no other installed package currently 
> > depends on or recommends it.
> > On another machine with an almost identical list of manually installed 
> > packages, I do not have timidity or timidity-daemon installed...
> 
> timidity used to recommend timidity-daemon (and some uses of APT wrongly 
> flag auto-installed packages as manually-installed, or miss flagging 
> them as auto-installed, or somesuch).  Seemingly relaxation from 
> recommends to suggests happened at release 2.14.0-4.

Hello Jonas!
Thanks for commenting on this bug log.

All this makes perfectly sense: timidity pulled timidity-daemon by
recommendation. Moreover recently, the recommendation has been turned
into a suggestion.

OK, this leaves me with the need to understand why package "timidity" is
installed on that machine, while it is not on the other similar one.
I am pretty sure I haven't installed timidity by hand...
And indeed it's marked as automatically installed:

  $ aptitude search timidity
  i A timidity                        - Software sound renderer (MIDI sequencer, M
  p   timidity-daemon                 - runs TiMidity++ as a system-wide MIDI sequ
  p   timidity-el                     - Emacs front end to Timidity++             
  p   timidity-interfaces-extra       - TiMidity++ extra user interfaces

Why is it there?

  $ aptitude why timidity
  i   fluid-soundfont-gm Suggests timidity

This cannot be the actual reason, because a suggestion is too weak a
relationship, and aptitude should propose to purge timidity as unused
package, whenever I issue my routine upgrade command
("aptitude update && aptitude --purge-unused safe-upgrade").

It cannot be a dependence, since aptitude is more than willing to purge
timidity, if I ask it to do so:

  $ aptitude -s --purge-unused purge timidity
  The following packages will be REMOVED:  
    timidity{p} 
  0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 4 not upgraded.
  Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 1,582 kB will be freed.
  
  Note: Using 'Simulate' mode.
  Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] 

Hence, it must be a recommendation, maybe.

Let's search:

  $ grep-aptavail -F Recommends timidity -s Package
  Package: ecasound
  Package: mma
  Package: openttd
  Package: pianobooster
  Package: python-pykaraoke
  Package: soundkonverter
  Package: tk707
  Package: wammu

But I don't have any of these packages installed:

  $ apt policy \
    $(grep-aptavail -F Recommends timidity -s Package \
      | awk -F: '{ print $2 }') | grep Installed
  
  WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.
  
    Installed: (none)
    Installed: (none)
    Installed: (none)
    Installed: (none)
    Installed: (none)
    Installed: (none)
    Installed: (none)
    Installed: (none)


Real mystery...



-- 
 http://www.inventati.org/frx/
 There's not a second to spare! To the laboratory!
..................................................... Francesco Poli .
 GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82  3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE

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