Bug#402491: marked as done (debootstrap: missing check in x_feign_install)

[Debian Bug Tracking System]

Your message dated Fri, 9 Mar 2018 22:49:46 +0900
with message-id <20180309224946.2913e2499bc212b9c75fa...@debian.org>
and subject line 
has caused the Debian Bug report #402491,
regarding debootstrap: missing check in x_feign_install
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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-- 
402491: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=402491
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Package: debootstrap
Version: 0.3.3.1

The suite scripts (e.g. scripts/sid) contain the following function:
    x_feign_install () {
        local pkg="$1"
        local deb="$(debfor $pkg)"
        local ver="$(
            ar -p "$TARGET/$deb" control.tar.gz | zcat |
                tar -O -xf - control ./control 2>/dev/null |
                sed -ne 's/^Version: *//Ip' | head -n 1
        )"

        // Some code deleted
    }

which is called to install dpkg right at the beginning of installing a new 
target system.

Due to various weird errors in the installer, other packages or CD 
building, I have several times seen debootstrap fail on this function 
with:
debootstrap: ar: 
debootstrap: Short read
debootstrap: 
debootstrap: zcat: Short read
debootstrap: chroot: cannot execute mount
debootstrap: : No such file or directory

I've often been puzzled by these errors as it is not at all clear where 
they come from. Especially the chroot call is misleading.
The ar and zcat errors are from the x_feign_install function which fails 
to check if $deb actually gets a value.

I'm aware that this is not supposed to happen, but as installs seem to 
quite regularly fail at this point, it would be nice if a check could be 
added here and debootstrap could bail out with a clearer error.

The latest case I've seen this was today due to #402482 which resulted in 
a (seemingly) truncated Packages.gz file, so no package information for 
dpkg could be found.

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