apt's dpkgpm.cc WriteApportReport function should gather more data

Bug #1825021 reported by Brian Murray
6
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
apt (Ubuntu)
New
High
Unassigned
Eoan
Won't Fix
High
Unassigned

Bug Description

While fixing bug 1813464 it occurred to me that it is not obvious that the dist-upgrader tarball includes its own copy of invoke-rc.d and that this has been complicated to debug more than once. The apport information in that report was gathered by apt's dpkgpm.cc code and I think we should extend that to gather additional information from the environment at the time that the package installation failed. For example the dist-upgrader sets the following:

        os.environ["PATH"] = "%s:%s" % (os.getcwd()+"/imported",
                                        os.environ["PATH"])

Gathering path from the environment would have made diagnosing bug 1813464 a lot easier. I tested modifying dpkgpm.cc with the following:

   if(const char* env_p = std::getenv("PATH"))
      fprintf(report, "EnvPATH: %s\n", env_p);

I then installed the crash-in-postinst package from the daisy-plucker-seeds PPA and received a crash report with the EnvPATH key and value. Its worth noting that when apport gathers environment information only a white listed set of keys is gathered to prevent disclosing potentially sensitive information. So we should look at what environment variables the dist-upgrader sets and gather those at a minimum.

Revision history for this message
Brian Murray (brian-murray) wrote :

In the event that this were SRU'ed for it to be useful we'd need to SRU apt to the release from which people were upgrading.

tags: added: disco rls-ee-incoming
Changed in apt (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → High
Revision history for this message
Julian Andres Klode (juliank) wrote :

FWIW, apt actually overrides PATH since bionic or cosmic or something like that.

tags: added: id-5cb602c6889ce851761205ca
Revision history for this message
Brian Murray (brian-murray) wrote : Re: [Bug 1825021] Re: apt's dpkgpm.cc WriteApportReport function should gather more data

On Tue, Apr 16, 2019 at 04:36:04PM -0000, Julian Andres Klode wrote:
> FWIW, apt actually overrides PATH since bionic or cosmic or something
> like that.

If that is the case then how could have the original bug been an issue?

--
Brian Murray

Revision history for this message
David Kalnischkies (donkult) wrote :

No idea about Ubuntu specifically, but it should be in upstream since apt 1.8.0~alpha3 release on Tue, 18 Dec 2018 15:02:11 +0100.
See also: https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/apt/merge_requests/38

Steve Langasek (vorlon)
tags: removed: rls-ee-incoming
Revision history for this message
Brian Murray (brian-murray) wrote :

eoan has reached end of life, so this bug will not be fixed for that release

Changed in apt (Ubuntu Eoan):
status: New → Won't Fix
tags: added: fr-238
To post a comment you must log in.
This report contains Public information  
Everyone can see this information.

Other bug subscribers

Remote bug watches

Bug watches keep track of this bug in other bug trackers.