[Pkg-sysvinit-devel] Bug#648784: 30K * /etc/motd broken symlink warnings in piuparts.d.o

[Dave Steele]

Package: initscripts
Version: 2.88dsf-13.13
Severity: Important
User: debian-qa at lists.debian.org
Usertags: piuparts piuparts.d.o

A very large number (~30,000) of packages at piuparts.debian.org,
which are otherwise passing all tests, are showing a warning for the
broken symlink "/etc/motd -> /var/run/motd". That link is maintained
by the initscripts package.

The current version of initscripts (2.88dsf-13.13, released 11/03/11)
passes a local Piuparts without a warning (symlinks is made in
initscripts.postinst, and torn down in initscripts.postrm). Also, a
(very small) sample of recent additions to the sid "but logfile
contains 'broken symlinks'" were tested locally without warnings, both
with and without the piuparts "-a" option. The version of initscripts
listed on piuparts.d.o, under "essential-required", is the current
version.

Despite this, piuparts.d.o continues to accumulate packages with this
warning. A recent example is libedata-book1.2-dev, tested last
Saturday.

    http://piuparts.debian.org/sid/pass/libedata-book1.2-dev_3.0.3-2.log

Note that this log file contains the following:


  The following packages will be upgraded:
    gcc-4.6-base initscripts libacl1 libgcc1 libncurses5 libpam-modules
    libpam-modules-bin libpam-runtime libpam0g libstdc++6 libtinfo5 ncurses-base
    ncurses-bin sysv-rc sysvinit sysvinit-utils tzdata
  17 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
...
  Get:15 http://piatti.debian.org/debian/ sid/main initscripts amd64
2.88dsf-13.13 [77.2 kB]
...
...
  Preparing to replace initscripts 2.88dsf-13.12 (using
.../initscripts_2.88dsf-13.13_amd64.deb) ...
  Unpacking replacement initscripts ...
  Setting up initscripts (2.88dsf-13.13) ...
...

1m9.9s ERROR: WARN: Broken symlinks:
  /etc/motd -> /var/run/motd


Set to Important, reflecting the number of entries in the Piuparts sid
broken symlink list.


Analysis script and log database at https://github.com/davesteele/piubsl