Ubuntu
mozilla-thunderbird package

Package includes empty /tmp with wrong permissions

Bug #43470 reported by huiac
12
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
mozilla-thunderbird (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
High
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: mozilla-thunderbird-typeaheadfind

We recently updated a bunch of Ubuntu Breezy machines (around 15-20) across multiple sites, and a handful ended up with /tmp set to permissions 0755.

We aren't clear on the actual mechanism, which we suspect must feature some kind of race, but each affected machine had mozilla-thunderbird-typehaeadfind installed, and in each case it was upgraded to version 1.0.8-0ubuntu05.10.1; this is also the only installed package (other than base-files) which appears to include /tmp, and the permissions for /tmp in the package reflect those found on the affected systems.

On affected systems, a number of important services which do not run as root (e.g., gdm) fail to start due to being unable to create files in /tmp.

No package other than base-files should include /tmp; please remove it from mozilla-thinderbird-typeaheadfind.

Thank you,

John Pearson.

See original description
Revision history for this message
Dennis Kaarsemaker (dennis) wrote :

Confirmed - this is quite a serious bug...

Changed in mozilla-thunderbird:
status: Unconfirmed → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Adam Conrad (adconrad) wrote :

While it IS a bug that mozilla-thinderbird-typeaheadfind contains /tmp, I don't think it can be responsible for your breakage. As I understand it, dpkg will never change the permissions on a directory once it exists on the filesystem, so there'd have to be something pretty interesting going on for /tmp to disappear completely during upgrade before mozilla-thinderbird-typeaheadfind gets installed.

Given that base-files is an Essential package, I just don't see how this could realistically happen.

Scott, do you have any light to shed on this? (the breakage, not the bug with the package shipping the directory)

Revision history for this message
Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott) wrote :

Nothing springs to mind

Revision history for this message
Adam Conrad (adconrad) wrote :

This is fixed in the 1.5.0.2-0ubuntu1 update.

Changed in mozilla-thunderbird:
status: Confirmed → Fix Released
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