Package: apt-get
Version: 0.5.4
Severity: minor
(Notice: it could also be apt-listchanges 2.18, that depends on where
you guys decide to fix the issue.)
I'm using a script in /etc/cron.daily that says
#! /bin/sh
apt-get -qq update && apt-get -qq -y upgrade
to automatically install updates (security patches in particular).
apt-get is configured to send reports to [EMAIL PROTECTED], and I get these
reports just fine.
However, whenever 'apt-get -qq -y upgrade' actually finds something to
upgrade, it invokes 'apt-listchanges', which in turn tries to access
/dev/tty (probably to output a confirmation message). This makes for
nasty-looking error messages at the end of the report, and makes me
moderately concerned that the upgrades are really installed correctly.
(Actually the messages are triggered by a missing /dev/tty. I know
that's a nonstandard setup, but it does give me a handle on those
programs that try to do console I/O despite living on a machine that
doesn't have a console - it's a root server that can be accessed through
ssh exclusively.)
It seems that 'apt-get -y' should call apt-listchanges in a way that
apt-listchanges doesn't ask for confirmation (probably via using
different command-line options, either by leaving out -c, or by adding
-y and extending apt-listchanges to accept a -y flag).
Background information:
Here's the content of one of the more recent mail reports I got from
apt-get (the part that looks unusual to me is in the last paragraph,
between and including the lines starting with "Traceback" and "IOError"):
--- snip ---
/etc/cron.daily/debian-update:
Reading changelogs...
mailutils (20020409-1woody2) stable-security; urgency=high
* Non-maintainer upload by the Security Team
* Second try
* Applied upstream patch to fix buffer overflow [mailbox/header.c,
CAN-2005-1520]
* Applied upstream patch to fix heap overflow [imap4d/fetch.c,
imap4d/util.c, CAN-2005-1521]
* Applied upstream patch to fix denial of service [imap4d/fetch.c,
CAN-2005-1522]
* Applied upstream patch to fix format string vulnerability
[imap4d/util.c, CAN-2005-1523]
-- Martin Schulze <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Fri, 27 May 2005 08:09:39 +0200
mailutils (20020409-1woody1) unstable; urgency=low
* Non-maintainer upload by the Security Team
* Applied upstream patch to fix buffer overflow [mailbox/header.c,
CAN-2005-1520]
* Applied upstream patch to fix heap overflow [imap4d/fetch.c,
CAN-2005-1521]
* Applied upstream patch to fix denial of service [imap4d/fetch.c,
CAN-2005-1522]
* Applied upstream patch to fix format string vulnerability
[imap4d/util.c, CAN-2005-1523]
-- Martin Schulze <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Thu, 26 May 2005 20:13:19 +0200
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/apt-listchanges", line 162, in ?
if not frontend.confirm():
File "/usr/lib/site-python/apt_listchanges.py", line 268, in confirm
tty = open('/dev/tty', 'r+')
IOError: [Errno 6] No such device or address: '/dev/tty'
(Reading database ... 20385 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace libmailutils0 20020409-1 (using
.../libmailutils0_20020409-1woody2_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement libmailutils0 ...
Setting up libmailutils0 (20020409-1woody2) ...
--- snip ---
Regards,
Jo
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