Package: menu Version: 2.1.27 Hello,
since ages I notice intermittent hangs of update-menu while upgrading
packages. Neither is there any connection to special packages where this
happens nor did I find any other period or something. I could also not
detect any correlation between subsequent failed or succeeded upgrade
runs. Sometimes an upgrade following a broken upgrade succeeds,
sometimes it fails, sometimes an upgrade following a successful upgrade
fails, sometimes it succeeds. That's why I don't belive this has
something to do with broken databases or things like that.
Whenever update-menus hangs, I see two update-menus processes, one with
ppid 1 and the hanging one, where the hanging one sometimes is in zombie
state, sometimes it just hangs. I'll attach some ps -ef outputs to show
the situations while such hangs.
Since everything went well over the winter and I didn't recognize such
hangs for a long time I thought the problem went away. However, now in
summer the problem appears again. Since my workstation sometimes speeds
down when it gets too hot I began thinking about some correlation
between speed and update-menu hangs. I tried to cool down my machine a
bit and belive it or not - there are less hangs :)
Of course, I'm not sure, but these symptoms look like some race
condition occuring in update-menus interprocess communication which
leads to these intermittent hangs.
Here are two different ps -ef outputs from two different hangs in the
same upgrade process:
root 21062 21175 13 15:51 pts/6 00:00:01 apt-get install --reinstall
libgtk2.0-doc
root 21073 21062 40 15:51 pts/6 00:00:02 /usr/bin/dpkg --status-fd 29
--unpack /var/cache/apt
root 21079 21073 0 15:51 pts/6 00:00:00 /bin/sh
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libgtk2.0-doc.prerm upgra
root 21081 21079 0 15:51 pts/6 00:00:00 /usr/bin/perl
/usr/sbin/install-docs -r gtk2-tutoria
root 21082 21081 2 15:51 pts/6 00:00:00 /usr/bin/update-menus
root 21083 21082 0 15:51 pts/6 00:00:00 /usr/bin/update-menus
root 21062 21175 0 15:51 pts/6 00:00:01 apt-get install --reinstall
libgtk2.0-doc
root 21100 1 0 15:52 pts/6 00:00:00 /usr/bin/update-menus
root 21109 21062 2 15:52 pts/6 00:00:01 /usr/bin/dpkg --status-fd 29
--configure libgtk2.0-d
root 21110 21109 0 15:52 pts/6 00:00:00 /bin/sh
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libgtk2.0-doc.postinst co
root 21132 21110 0 15:52 pts/6 00:00:00 /usr/bin/perl
/usr/sbin/install-docs -i /usr/share/d
root 21134 21132 0 15:52 pts/6 00:00:00 /usr/bin/update-menus
root 21135 21134 0 15:52 pts/6 00:00:00 [update-menus] <defunct>
Of course, I don't expect you to be able to locate or even fix this
issue based only on my spongy description. However, since I seem to have
an enviroment where I can somewhat "reliably" reproduce these hangs,
perhaps you have some idea where I could step deeper into the problem.
Perhaps you'll even have some debug version that especially debugs
update-menus IPCs.
Thanks for your work & regards
Mario
--
As a rule, the more bizarre a thing is, the less mysterious it proves to be.
-- Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
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