[pkg-netfilter-team] Bug#912046: debsums: Error: symlink loop detected in path 'sbin/ebtables'.

[Laurent Bigonville]

On Sat, 1 Dec 2018 13:36:11 +0100 gregor herrmann <gregoa at debian.org> wrote:

 > On Sat, 27 Oct 2018 17:39:50 +0200, Laurent Bigonville wrote:
 >
 > > When running debsums -ac, it complains that:
 > >
 > > debsums: Error: symlink loop detected in path 'sbin/ebtables'. 
Please file a bug against ebtables.
 > >
 > > So here is the bug report.
 >
 > I can't reproduce this (by installing the package and running
 > debsums), and I don't see any symlinkery in the package either but I
 > might miss somthing.
 >
 > What do see are alternatives [0] but they all seem to be in the
 > iptables package and /sbin/ebtables doesn't seem to be involved.
 >
 > So maybe this is/was an iptables problem and maybe this was/is fixed
 > (or maybe I have a to old iptables version).
 >

 > Or is this another merged-/usr issue poppoing up?

Alright, so it's indeed a problem with usrmerge and the fact that 
ebtables package is NOT using the alternative for (/usr)/sbin/ebtables

Apparently, iptables now adds an alternative to /usr/sbin/ebtables:

         update-alternatives \
           --install /usr/sbin/ebtables ebtables /usr/sbin/ebtables-nft 20 \
           --slave /usr/sbin/ebtables-restore ebtables-restore 
/usr/sbin/ebtables-nft-restore \
           --slave /usr/sbin/ebtables-save ebtables-save 
/usr/sbin/ebtables-nft-save

But as the ebtables package is still providing a real executables in 
/sbin/ebtables* ; with usr-merge it explodes.

IMVHO, iptables package should provides "ebtables" (it's providing the 
same CLI interface right?) and must breaks with the current version of 
ebtables. And either ebtables must be kicked out of the archive (is this 
really deprecated?) and/or use the alternatives system.

It seems that the same problem exists with the aprtables package.... The 
fact that iptables package started providing ebtables/arptables 
executable without coordination is quite bad.

Note there is also bug #913883 that is more than probably a duplicate of 
this bug.