Re: Strange aptitude behaviour and crashes

On Mon, Jun 05, 2006 at 13:48:09 -0400, Henk Boom wrote:
On 6/4/06, Florian Kulzer wrote:
On Sat, Jun 03, 2006 at 17:50:51 -0400, Henk Boom wrote:
Hi, ever since dist-upgrading from sarge to etch, I have been having
some issues with aptitude. Here's an example:

When I look at the entries for the gimp (which I do not have
installed) in aptitude, the entry on the main list is (approximately):
p gimp <none> <none>
and when I hit enter on this entry I get a page without a description,
with only an entry for "Packages which depend on gimp" and for
"Versions". Although there is no version listed at the top of this
page, there _is_ a version listed as
p 2.2.11-1
in this Versions entry.

When I hit enter on that version, I get a new page which is more
complete. The version at the top right of the page is still listed as
<none>, but there is a description of the package and the usual
dependency information. I can't install by hitting plus at the top of
this page, but it lets me do so when I select the entry in the
Versions node.

However, when try to install, aptitude tells me "Suggest 2 keeps" and
gives me three choices, to leave both gimp and gimp-data at their
current versions (which is [UNINST]), to install gimp-data and
gimp-svg, or to install just gimp-data. When I pick either of the last
two, it appears to work OK, but when I hit go and confirm, aptitude
dies with a segfault. It might be helpful to know that when I am not
logged in as root, it crashes after asking whether I want to become
root, but before giving me the password prompt.

My sources.list reads:
deb ftp://mirror.direct.ca/pub/linux/debian/ etch main
deb-src ftp://mirror.direct.ca/pub/linux/debian/ etch main

deb ftp://mirror.direct.ca/pub/linux/debian/ etch non-free
deb ftp://mirror.direct.ca/pub/linux/debian/ etch contrib

I have an identical problem with trying to install inkscape. These are
both programs which I had installed from backports before
dist-upgrading from sarge, but uninstalled when I upgraded.

I would check if the problem is with aptitude or if it occurs at a
"lower" level in the packaging system. Try if the following commands
produce reasonable output:

apt-cache policy gimp
apt-cache show gimp

[...]

It would appear that the apt-get install gimp inkscape command gives
me the most indicative information.

Here's the output of all three commands:

====================================

henk-linux:~# apt-cache policy gimp
gimp:
Installed: (none)
Candidate: (none)
Package pin: (not found)
^^^^^^^^^^^
That is not good.

Version table:
2.2.11-1 999
500 ftp://mirror.direct.ca etch/main Packages

[ snipped: output of "apt-cache show gimp", looked OK ]

henk-linux:~# apt-get install gimp inkscape

[...]

Package gimp is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
gimp-python gimp-helpbrowser gimp-data
E: Package gimp has no installation candidate

My guess is that you still have the package pins which are normally used
in conjunction with the backports repository. This can be expected to
confuse apt(itude) if you have removed the backports lines from your
/etc/apt/sources.list, since it can no longer find the version that you
pinned to. Have a look at your /etc/apt/preferences and remove all
package pins that refer to backported packages.

If this turns out to be the case, then we should maybe file a bug
against aptitude (segfaulting because of a misconfiguration). Comments
anyone? (I can't connect to bugs.debian.org at the moment, therefore I
can't check if this is a known issue.)

--
Regards,
Florian


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