[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#983751: dosfstools-4.2 breaks vfat formatting of entire device

[Allison Karlitskaya]

Package: udisks2
Version: 2.9.1-3

A new version of dosfstools (4.2) just landed on testing, and we're
suddenly seeing a new failure in cockpit's integration testing:
specifically, attempting to create a fat filesystem on /dev/sda (the
direct device, not a partition) fails.  This works correctly with
dosfstools 4.1.

See https://github.com/cockpit-project/bots/pull/1701

This problem is not limited to cockpit, however. You can see the
problem rather directly with this reproducer:

root at debian:~# dpkg -i dosfstools_4.1-2_amd64.deb
dpkg: warning: downgrading dosfstools from 4.2-1 to 4.1-2
(Reading database ... 70287 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack dosfstools_4.1-2_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking dosfstools (4.1-2) over (4.2-1) ...
Setting up dosfstools (4.1-2) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.9.4-1) ...
root at debian:~# gdbus call --system --dest org.freedesktop.UDisks2
--object-path /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/sda --method
org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Block.Format vfat '{}'
()


but then:

root at debian:~# dpkg -i dosfstools_4.2-1_amd64.deb
(Reading database ... 70285 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack dosfstools_4.2-1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking dosfstools (4.2-1) over (4.1-2) ...
Setting up dosfstools (4.2-1) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.9.4-1) ...
root at debian:~# gdbus call --system --dest org.freedesktop.UDisks2
--object-path /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/sda --method
org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Block.Format vfat '{}'
Error: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Error.Failed: Error
synchronizing after formatting with type `vfat': Timed out waiting for
object


note that attempting to format a partition works fine, even with the
new version:
root at debian:~# fdisk /dev/sda
[... create primary partition /dev/sda1 ... ]
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered.
Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
Syncing disks.

root at debian:~# gdbus call --system --dest org.freedesktop.UDisks2
--object-path /org/freedesktop/UDisks2/block_devices/sda1 --method
org.freedesktop.UDisks2.Block.Format vfat '{}'
()