Hi Guillem!
On 02/10/2025 04:36, Guillem Jover wrote:
Control: severity -1 important
Hi!
On Wed, 2025-10-01 at 13:45:13 +0200, Lee Garrett wrote:
Source: dlocate
Version: 1.17
Severity: grave
X-Debbugs-Cc: [email protected]
on a fresh trixie install, /etc/cron.daily/dlocate will fail every day with
following email:
/etc/cron.daily/dlocate:
grep-available: /var/lib/dpkg/available: No such file or directory
The call chain is:
/etc/cron.daily/dlocate -> /usr/sbin/update-dlocatedb ->
/usr/share/dlocate/update-dpkg-list
This file doesn't seem to be created on trixie systems, and on my upgraded
systems /var/lib/dpkg/available seems to be at least 5 years old. It seems
to have been created in the past with `dpkg --update-avail`, dlocate should
ensure this is being called and the file is current before depending on
the existence of the file.
dlocate uses the available database to replicate what dpkg used to
print in its «dpkg-query --list» output, but that one has also since
stopped loading the available file by default.
dlocate cannot know from where to update the available file from, most
probably from apt, but another frontend could be in use. I don't think
it would be safe for anything else to remove the available file
either.
I've locally switched the grep-available calls to use «dpkg --print-avail»
instead which does not fail with a non-existent available database file.
I'll probably file a report against dctrl-tools so that grep-available
does not fail on a non-existent available database file.
I agree that both `dpkg --print-avail`, and also a bug report against
dctrl-tools are good choices.
Besides that, I think, that at least in your present but stale case your
best option is to run something like «dpkg --clear-avail» or simply
remove the available database file.
It's not directly releated to dlocate, but I'm wondering if this file was
regularly updated in past releases. At least my quick search on codesearch.d.o
did not bring up any meaningful results.
I've set the severity to grave, since AFAICS this will cause dlocate to either
not work or work with several years old stale data.
The stale data would only affect the non-installed package listing,
which does not seem grave to me. I've lowered it to important, because
the cron spam can be very annoying.
Sounds sensible to me, ack. :)
I'm uploading a fix right away, and will probably prepare a stable
update once this release hits testing.
Cool, thanks for the quick reply! Looking forward to a fix in the point release
then.
Thanks,
Guillem
Greetings,
Lee
