This bug was fixed in the package appstream - 0.12.0-3ubuntu1
---------------
appstream (0.12.0-3ubuntu1) bionic; urgency=medium
* cache-explicit-variants.patch: fix crash when upgrading from bionic
to cosmic (LP: #1792537)
-- Olivier Tilloy <[email protected]> Fri, 14 Sep 2018
10:59:05 +0200
** Changed in: appstream (Ubuntu Bionic)
Status: Fix Committed => Fix Released
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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1792537
Title:
/usr/bin/appstreamcli:5:g_variant_new_parsed_va:g_variant_builder_add_parsed:as_content_rating_to_variant:as_component_to_variant:as_cache_file_save
Status in appstream package in Ubuntu:
Fix Released
Status in appstream source package in Bionic:
Fix Released
Bug description:
The Ubuntu Error Tracker has been receiving reports about a problem regarding
appstream. This problem was most recently seen with package version 0.12.2-2,
the problem page at
https://errors.ubuntu.com/problem/fca706c9b229ddb2bae3fa59877eee4f98f69366
contains more details, including versions of packages affected, stacktrace or
traceback, and individual crash reports.
If you do not have access to the Ubuntu Error Tracker and are a software
developer, you can request it at http://forms.canonical.com/reports/.
This crash happens when trying to upgrade a fully up-to-date bionic
machine to cosmic. appstreamcli crashes with the following error, thus
aborting the upgrade process:
E:Problem executing scripts APT::Update::Post-Invoke-Success 'if
/usr/bin/test -w /var/cache/app-info -a -e /usr/bin/appstreamcli; then
appstreamcli refresh-cache > /dev/null; fi', E:Sub-process retrened an
error code
[Impact]
* As of today, users upgrading from bionic to cosmic will see the
upgrade process abort early on because of this crash. This is most
likely caused by malformed appstream metadata, so the issue might go
away if that metadata is fixed at some point. In the meantime, this
completely prevents bionic→cosmic upgrades.
* The fix is upstream
(https://github.com/ximion/appstream/commit/734e9da66bf12fcaa94c10465db2dcf8bb2b94cb)
and in the cosmic version of appstream
[Test Case]
1. On a fresh bionic installation, change bionic to cosmic in sources.list
2. Run apt update
This use case happens when the user does a release upgrade.
[Regression potential]
This patch affects the way appstream metadata is parsed to build a
representation in memory. Potential regressions may happen if the
parser is fed invalid/malformed metadata with unexpected types. That's
actually the cause of the crash itself, so we cannot assume that it
won't happen again with differently malformed metadata.
There doesn't appear to be specific tests associated to that crash in
the upstream commit that fixes it, so there's no guarantee it won't
regress in the future.
[Other Info]
According to errors.ubuntu.com the crash still happens in cosmic with
appstream 0.12.2-2, which would imply that the patch does not fix all
occurrences of the problem.
However according to Laney this data is not always accurate, sometimes
crashes which happen around an upgrade are reported against the new version
mistakenly.
To manage notifications about this bug go to:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/appstream/+bug/1792537/+subscriptions
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