Ubuntu
update-manager package

Update manager fails to notice corrupted /var/lib/dpkg/available

Bug #69542 reported by Arwyn Hainsworth
2
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
update-manager (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: update-manager

If the /var/lib/apt/available file is corrupted, the update-manager will silently abort the installation of new packages and update the list instead.

This was a bit confusing at first because no error was given. Only by running apt-get upgrade did I find out that the avail data was corupted and a quick dpkg --clear-avail solved the problem.

Expected behaviour would be to either give an error on detection of corrupt data or to silently fix the error.

The current behaviour can render it imposible to update the system via update-manager alone and as such could be a slight security risk for non-expert users.

Tags: edgy-upgrade
Revision history for this message
Michael Vogt (mvo) wrote :

Thanks for your bugreport.

Could you please attach the files in /var/log/dist-upgrade/ to this bugreport? This will make it a lot easier for me to diagnose the problem.

Thanks,
 michael

Changed in update-manager:
status: Unconfirmed → Needs Info
Revision history for this message
Arwyn Hainsworth (arwyn) wrote :

here is /var/log/dist-upgrade/apt.log

Revision history for this message
Arwyn Hainsworth (arwyn) wrote :

and here is /var/log/dist-upgrade/term.log

however I should note that i'm not so much worried that it the file got corrupted(shit happens), but that the update manager failed to notice or correct the corruption.

apt-get wouldn't work either, but at least it told me there was something wrong...

I'm not attaching the actual available file, but from what I could see with a quick less, there was a huge chunk of binary data in the middle. I might be able to find the backup I made of it if you need it?

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

[Expired for update-manager (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

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