Package: apt-listbugs
Version: 0.1.35
Severity: normal
Dear Maintainer,
* What led up to the situation?
Early this month apt-listbugs reported a significant error in
newer versions of exim4, bug 988086. I told it to hold the upgrade.
This pinned exim4-daemon-light, but upgraded a number of other exim
components. aptitude wanted to "upgrade" exim4-base, which
triggered dependency problems whose solution involved removing
exim. So I put a manual hold on exim4-base.
On May 15 a fix for the problem was released, marked as fixed in
4.94.2-4. I got no emails from apt-listbugs about the fix (I'm not
sure if it's supposed to send them, but some of the code looks like
that), and the preferences file pinning the package remained.
* What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
ineffective)?
Today I saw the bug was fixed and directed aptitude to upgrade
exim4-base. This led again to conflicts and the solution of
uninstalling most exim4 packages and replacing them with
nullmailer.
I believe the cause was the fact that exim4-daemon-light was
still pinned, making my upgrade of exim4 base unable to pull in the
appropriate version.
In aptitude I manually selected the most recent version of
exim4-daemon-light and the upgrade was able to proceed.
During my debugging, described later, I seem to have triggered a
proper run of the cleaner that removed the pin.
* What was the outcome of this action?
exim4 is now fully upgraded to 4.94.2-5.
Before the debugging, apt-listbugs' pin entry remained in place.
aptitude did not want to downgrade to the pinned version. I'm not
sure if the pin would have prevented future upgrades.
* What outcome did you expect instead?
Naively, that when the bug was fixed the pin would be removed and
my packages upgraded.
On reflection, it seems unlikely apt-listbugs would undo the hold I
put on exim4-base manually. A more realistic expectation is that
apt-listbugs would remove the pin on exim4-daemon-light when the
fixed version became available and send me an email about it (or at
least generate a message in the logs).
* Further diagnostic and debugging info
Note results of trying to recreate the daily run with diagnostics at
the bottom. Apparently I did better than recreate it, since it
actually worked.
--------------- /etc/apt/preferences.d/apt-listbugs -------------------
Explanation: Pinned by apt-listbugs at 2021-05-05 10:57:20 -0700
Explanation: #988086: Exim delivery process crashes on each mail with
NULL-pointer
Package: exim4-daemon-light
Pin: version 4.94-17
Pin-Priority: 30000
-----------------------------------------------------------
Status of exim4 packages before the steps above:
un exim4 <none> <none> (no description available)
hi exim4-base 4.94-19 amd64 support files for all Exim
MTA (v4) packages
ii exim4-config 4.94.2-5 all configuration for the Exim
MTA (v4)
un exim4-config-2 <none> <none> (no description available)
un exim4-daemon-custom <none> <none> (no description available)
un exim4-daemon-heavy <none> <none> (no description available)
ii exim4-daemon-light 4.94-17 amd64 lightweight Exim MTA (v4)
daemon
un exim4-doc-html <none> <none> (no description available)
ii exim4-doc-info 4.94-2 all documentation for the Exim
MTA (v4) in info format
un exim4-localscanapi-4.1 <none> <none> (no description available)
un eximdoc4-info <none> <none> (no description available)
ii eximon4 4.94.2-5 amd64 monitor application for
the Exim MTA (v4) (X11 interface)
and after:
un exim4 <none> <none> (no description available)
ii exim4-base 4.94.2-5 amd64 support files for all Exim
MTA (v4) packages
ii exim4-config 4.94.2-5 all configuration for the Exim
MTA (v4)
un exim4-config-2 <none> <none> (no description available)
un exim4-daemon-custom <none> <none> (no description available)
un exim4-daemon-heavy <none> <none> (no description available)
ii exim4-daemon-light 4.94.2-5 amd64 lightweight Exim MTA (v4)
daemon
un exim4-doc-html <none> <none> (no description available)
ii exim4-doc-info 4.94-2 all documentation for the Exim
MTA (v4) in info format
un exim4-localscanapi-4.1 <none> <none> (no description available)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
root@debtest:~# date; journalctl -S 2021-05-25 -u apt-listbugs
Thu 27 May 2021 10:24:16 AM PDT
-- Journal begins at Mon 2021-04-26 16:32:26 PDT, ends at Thu 2021-05-27
10:23:55 PDT. --
May 25 11:31:20 debtest systemd[1]: Starting Daily apt-listbugs preferences
cleanup...
May 25 11:31:21 debtest systemd[1]: apt-listbugs.service: Succeeded.
May 25 11:31:21 debtest systemd[1]: Finished Daily apt-listbugs preferences
cleanup.
May 26 11:35:20 debtest systemd[1]: Starting Daily apt-listbugs preferences
cleanup...
May 26 11:35:22 debtest systemd[1]: apt-listbugs.service: Succeeded.
May 26 11:35:22 debtest systemd[1]: Finished Daily apt-listbugs preferences
cleanup.
May 27 10:01:20 debtest systemd[1]: Starting Daily apt-listbugs preferences
cleanup...
May 27 10:01:22 debtest systemd[1]: apt-listbugs.service: Succeeded.
May 27 10:01:22 debtest systemd[1]: Finished Daily apt-listbugs preferences
cleanup.
This is with my modification of the timer so it only runs daily.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
My first attempt to run the daily job didn't do much because it
detected the recent run. I manually changed the datestamp to get it
to fire.
root@debtest:~# # manually reset last run time
root@debtest:~# cat /var/spool/apt-listbugs/lastprefclean
20210526
root@debtest:~# date; sh -x /usr/libexec/apt-listbugs/prefclean
Thu 27 May 2021 10:34:00 AM PDT
+ test -d /run/systemd/system
+ test -x /usr/sbin/sendmail
+ dailyprefclean
+ myoutput=+ date +%Y%m%d -d now - 7 hours
+ today=20210527
+ lastrunfile=/var/spool/apt-listbugs/lastprefclean
+ cat /var/spool/apt-listbugs/lastprefclean
+ lastrunday=20210526
+ test 20210527 -le 20210526
+ prefclean
+ file=/etc/apt/preferences.d/apt-listbugs
+ backup=/var/backups/apt-listbugs.preferences
+ test -x /usr/libexec/apt-listbugs/aptcleanup
+ test -x /usr/bin/apt-listbugs
+ test -f /etc/apt/preferences.d/apt-listbugs
+ mktemp --tmpdir apt-listbugs_tmp_preferences.XXXXXX
+ tmp=/tmp/apt-listbugs_tmp_preferences.N3v2Ma
+ /usr/libexec/apt-listbugs/aptcleanup
+ diff -B /tmp/apt-listbugs_tmp_preferences.N3v2Ma
/etc/apt/preferences.d/apt-listbugs
+ /bin/rm -f /tmp/apt-listbugs_tmp_preferences.N3v2Ma
+ printf %s\n 20210527
+ test x+ date +%Y%m%d -d now - 7 hours
+ today=20210527
+ lastrunfile=/var/spool/apt-listbugs/lastprefclean
+ cat /var/spool/apt-listbugs/lastprefclean
+ lastrunday=20210526
+ test 20210527 -le 20210526
+ prefclean
+ file=/etc/apt/preferences.d/apt-listbugs
+ backup=/var/backups/apt-listbugs.preferences
+ test -x /usr/libexec/apt-listbugs/aptcleanup
+ test -x /usr/bin/apt-listbugs
+ test -f /etc/apt/preferences.d/apt-listbugs
+ mktemp --tmpdir apt-listbugs_tmp_preferences.XXXXXX
+ tmp=/tmp/apt-listbugs_tmp_preferences.N3v2Ma
+ /usr/libexec/apt-listbugs/aptcleanup
+ diff -B /tmp/apt-listbugs_tmp_preferences.N3v2Ma
/etc/apt/preferences.d/apt-listbugs
+ /bin/rm -f /tmp/apt-listbugs_tmp_preferences.N3v2Ma
+ printf %s\n 20210527 != x
+ hostname
+ myhost=debtest
+ /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -odi
Hmm, that actually seems to have done something; it sent this mail:
-----------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 27 May 2021 10:01:21 -0700
From: apt-listbugs timer <root@debtest>
To: r...@debtest.betterworld.us
Subject: prefclean output on debtest
/usr/libexec/apt-listbugs/prefclean:
Fixed packages : exim4-daemon-light
-----------------------------------------
And /etc/apt/preferences.d/apt-listbugs is now length 0.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 11.0
APT prefers testing-security
APT policy: (500, 'testing-security'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-6-amd64 (SMP w/3 CPU threads)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled
Versions of packages apt-listbugs depends on:
ii apt 2.2.3
ii ruby 1:2.7+2
ii ruby-debian 0.3.10+b4
ii ruby-gettext 3.3.3-2
ii ruby-soap4r 2.0.5-5
ii ruby-unicode 0.4.4.4-1+b1
ii ruby-xmlparser 0.7.3-4
Versions of packages apt-listbugs recommends:
ii ruby-httpclient 2.8.3-2
Versions of packages apt-listbugs suggests:
ii konqueror [www-browser] 4:20.12.0-4
ii reportbug 7.10.3
ii sensible-utils 0.0.14
ii xdg-utils 1.1.3-4.1
-- no debconf information
-- debsums errors found:
debsums: changed file /lib/systemd/system/apt-listbugs.timer (from apt-listbugs
package)
