Ubuntu
synaptic package

Malformed Apt Source Causes Segfault in Synaptic

Bug #71028 reported by Stephen Eisenhauer
22
This bug affects 1 person
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
synaptic (Ubuntu)
Fix Released
Medium
Michael Vogt

Bug Description

Binary package hint: synaptic

A malformed/lacking entry in sources.list causes:

- A bombardment of (expected) error messages upon synaptic startup, and
- A segfault/crash when a "Reload" (apt update) is attempted.

Relevant console output is minimal:

"Segmentation fault (core dumped)"

The line that, specifically, causes the issue for me is as follows:

deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org/ edgy

This line is admittedly incorrect, but that's no excuse for a segmentation fault! To reproduce the bug, simply add that to your sources.list, fire up synaptic, get past the error messages, and click "Reload".

Let me know if more info is needed.

Revision history for this message
John Vivirito (gnomefreak) wrote :

Thanks for your bug report. Could you please try to obtain the
backtrace for /var/crash and attach it to this bug.

Changed in synaptic:
status: Unconfirmed → Needs Info
Revision history for this message
Sebastian Heinlein (glatzor) wrote :

At first please watch your language. There is no excuse for being harsh.

Which version of Ubuntu do you use?

Changed in synaptic:
assignee: nobody → glatzor
Revision history for this message
Stephen Eisenhauer (bhspitmonkey) wrote :

Huh? Whose language are you condemning, Sebastian?

John, could you please give me a little more instruction as to what you need me to do? I'm not very acquainted with the debugging process at this point.

Revision history for this message
John Vivirito (gnomefreak) wrote :

Stephen on edgy please look in the /var/crash for a crash file on apt or synaptic and please attach the logs you find for this issue.

Revision history for this message
Stephen Eisenhauer (bhspitmonkey) wrote :

Here is the file /var/crash/_usr_sbin_synaptic.0.crash , generated from this crash.

Revision history for this message
Robert Persson (ireneshusband) wrote :

I can confirm this bug in feisty (synaptic-0.57.11.1ubuntu14). Simply enter an apt line with the final slash missing and click reload. Synaptic will crash and will crash again every time you try to start it until you correct the sources.list in a text editor.

I don't seem to have a /var/crash/*synaptic* though.

Revision history for this message
Paul Dufresne (paulduf) wrote :

Thanks for attaching the requested crash report.
So Confirming.

Changed in update-manager:
assignee: glatzor → nobody
status: Incomplete → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Brian Murray (brian-murray) wrote :

I've reproduced this bug using Gutsy and synaptic version 0.60ubuntu5. I received the following dialog:

E: Malformed line 56 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list (dist parse)
E: The list of sources could not be read.
Go to the repository dialog to correct the problem.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.

and then synaptic quit. It mentions going to the repository dialog which isn't really possible if synaptic just quits so this seems quite unhelpful. At a minimum I think better instructions should be given on how to resolve the issue.

Changed in update-manager:
importance: Undecided → Medium
status: Confirmed → Triaged
milestone: none → ubuntu-8.04
Colin Watson (cjwatson)
Changed in synaptic:
assignee: nobody → mvo
Revision history for this message
Michael Vogt (mvo) wrote :

Thanks for your bugreport.

I have tried to reproduce the crash in hardy and I can not reproduce it anymore. Both the the line:

deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org/ edgy
deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org/ edgy/

(someone mentioned that a trailing "/" makes it crash).

Could you please let me know if you still can reproduce it (and if so, how) ?

Thanks,
 Michael

Changed in synaptic:
milestone: ubuntu-8.04 → none
status: Triaged → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Jeffrey Ratcliffe (jeffreyratcliffe) wrote :

I have this in Hardy. But only if there is no component specified, and distribution does not finish with a slash:

E: Malformed line 59 in source list /etc/apt/sources.list (dist parse)
E: The list of sources could not be read.
Go to the repository dialogue to correct the problem.
E: _cache->open() failed, please report.

i.e.

deb http://gscan2pdf.sourceforge.net/download/debian sid

will crash Synaptic

Jeffrey Ratcliffe (jeffreyratcliffe)
Changed in synaptic:
status: Incomplete → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
John Vivirito (gnomefreak) wrote :

Michael Didn't beryl drop its repos since it is now Compiz?
I am unable to reproduce this with PPA's enabled

Revision history for this message
Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel) wrote :

It is fixed in the latest release. A dialog pops up to display an error message to the user.

Changed in synaptic (Ubuntu):
status: Confirmed → Fix Released
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