Bug#590885: upgrade fails w/ 'dpkg: parse error' due to Lenny version of non-free VirtualBox package
Hi! On Fri, 2010-07-30 at 05:40:39 +0200, Guillem Jover wrote: On Thu, 2010-07-29 at 19:58:24 -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote: Joe Neal wrote: Upgrading dpkg fails due to having it installed, however. I'm concerned about the potential for Lenny -- Squeeze upgrade failures for people with this package installed under Lenny. I guess an option could be mentioning the possible issues with bogus versions on the release notes. Given the amount of comments to these bug reports and their nature I don't think this would be acceptable, even more given the tedious recovery needed. As for a proper solution: I have no idea. I am not sure dpkg should be enforcing policy like this. It might be better to check sanity by excluding empty strings and some *forbidden* characters and leaving the rest to checkers like lintian. I've been thinking about a proper solution for this, this is what I think would be ideal, for which I've started coding: * dpkg should not error out (warn at most, but that might be too annoying too) when parsing the status and available files, we might switch these to errors after one Debian release, but maybe then only for the status file. * dpkg should error out on parsing bogus versions on anything else, which include things such as Dpkg perl modules, dpkg-deb, dpkg --compare-versions, and parsing control files from newly installed packages, which would prevent installing new bogus packages. * The version checks will be able to get stricter, there's still some invalid syntax not being checked for, I've also some preliminary patches for this. thanks, guillem -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#590885: upgrade fails w/ 'dpkg: parse error' due to Lenny version of non-free VirtualBox package
Am I correct in assuming that anyone with that line in their sources.list will have a failed upgrade? Assumption is correct. I had the same errors and corrected them manually in /var/lib/dpkg/available.
Bug#590885: upgrade fails w/ 'dpkg: parse error' due to Lenny version of non-free VirtualBox package
Adding my 2 cents; I get this error: dpkg: parse error, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 143292 package 'postfix-tls': error in Version string `1.1.11+tls0.'.15-0.woody1': invalid character in version number No postfix-tls package is installed on my system. I'm pretty sure this comes from the official repositories (admittedly from long ago). So it would be cool if there was something to deal with this kind of old cruft. Regards, -- Pierre Ynard Une âme dans un corps, c'est comme un dessin sur une feuille de papier. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#590885: upgrade fails w/ 'dpkg: parse error' due to Lenny version of non-free VirtualBox package
Hi Guillem, On Fri, 30 Jul 2010, Guillem Jover wrote: I'll consider whether to do something about these bug reports for tomorrow's upload, mostly because this is a regression from the point of view of the user, that had a working dpkg before the upgrade and it suddenly stopped working. But I'm tending to think about this as wontfix. Would it be doable to add a pre-inst snippet that sed/awks the available/status file? Or is that not going to work because dpkg has already loaded the file and won't take into account those changes? I guess so. Ideal would be to fix it by replacing invalid characters by +invalid+char+removed+by+dpkg+. sed -i -e '/^Version:/ s/[^-a-zA-Z0-9:.+~ ]/+invalid+char+removed+by+dpkg+/g' /var/lib/dpkg/available Alternatively it should abort the upgrade and ask the user to cleanup before-hand. It could give out the requireds commands. We could also fix http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=397121 so that the cruft in the available file really affects only dselect users. This would make dpkg more robust in general BTW. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer ◈ [Flattr=20693] Follow my Debian News ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.com (English) ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.fr (Français) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#590885: upgrade fails w/ 'dpkg: parse error' due to Lenny version of non-free VirtualBox package
Package: dpkg Version: dpkg_1.15.8_amd64.deb Severity: normal I'm aware of the fact that running the Lenny version of Oracle's VB package under sid is not supported. Hell, I'm supprised it even works. Upgrading dpkg fails due to having it installed, however. I'm concerned about the potential for Lenny -- Squeeze upgrade failures for people with this package installed under Lenny. Here is the error: Preparing to replace dpkg 1.15.7.2 (using .../archives/dpkg_1.15.8_amd64.deb) ... Unpacking replacement dpkg ... Processing triggers for man-db ... dpkg: parse error, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 60680 package 'virtualbox-3.0': error in Version string `3.0.12-54655_Debian_lenny': invalid character in revision number E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2) A package failed to install. Trying to recover: dpkg: parse error, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 60680 package 'virtualbox-3.0': error in Version string `3.0.12-54655_Debian_lenny': invalid character in revision number Actualy, I now seem to be unable to remove the virtualbox package to remedy the problem as I initialy planned, leaving my system unupgradable. This is going to be fun. -- System Information: Debian Release: squeeze/sid APT prefers unstable APT policy: (500, 'unstable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#590885: upgrade fails w/ 'dpkg: parse error' due to Lenny version of non-free VirtualBox package
forcemerge 590896 590885
quit
Joe Neal wrote:
I'm aware of the fact that running the Lenny version of Oracle's VB
package under sid is not supported.
Hell, I'm supprised it even works.
Upgrading dpkg fails due to having it installed, however. I'm
concerned about the potential for Lenny -- Squeeze upgrade
failures for people with this package installed under Lenny.
Here is the error:
Preparing to replace dpkg 1.15.7.2 (using .../archives/dpkg_1.15.8_amd64.deb)
...
Unpacking replacement dpkg ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
dpkg: parse error, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 60680 package
'virtualbox-3.0':
error in Version string `3.0.12-54655_Debian_lenny': invalid character in
revision number
Thanks for a very clear report!
Actualy, I now seem to be unable to remove the virtualbox package to
remedy the problem as I initialy planned, leaving my system
unupgradable. This is going to be fun.
You can edit /var/lib/dpkg/available by hand, but it might be easier
to try something like this patch.
As for a proper solution: I have no idea. I am not sure dpkg should
be enforcing policy like this. It might be better to check sanity
by excluding empty strings and some *forbidden* characters and
leaving the rest to checkers like lintian.
diff --git a/lib/dpkg/parsehelp.c b/lib/dpkg/parsehelp.c
index 5d80213..ed3aba8 100644
--- a/lib/dpkg/parsehelp.c
+++ b/lib/dpkg/parsehelp.c
@@ -253,7 +253,7 @@ const char *parseversion(struct versionrevision *rversion,
const char *string) {
return _(invalid character in version number);
}
for (ptr = rversion-revision; *ptr; ptr++) {
-if (!cisdigit(*ptr) !cisalpha(*ptr) strchr(.-+~, *ptr) == NULL)
+if (!cisdigit(*ptr) !cisalpha(*ptr) strchr(.-+~_, *ptr) == NULL)
return _(invalid character in revision number);
}
--
--
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Bug#590885: upgrade fails w/ 'dpkg: parse error' due to Lenny version of non-free VirtualBox package
severity 590885 important
thanks
On Thu, 2010-07-29 at 19:58:24 -0500, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
forcemerge 590896 590885
Well, the severity is not critical for sure. More so in this case
given that the problem is with the bogus version, and no official
package contains one. For reference, the definition for important:
“a bug which has a major effect on the usability of a package,
without rendering it completely unusable to everyone.”
Joe Neal wrote:
I'm aware of the fact that running the Lenny version of Oracle's VB
package under sid is not supported.
Hell, I'm supprised it even works.
It seems starting with 3.2.0 virtualbox has now correct version
numbers, and the version for Lenny from
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads should work fine.
Upgrading dpkg fails due to having it installed, however. I'm
concerned about the potential for Lenny -- Squeeze upgrade
failures for people with this package installed under Lenny.
I guess an option could be mentioning the possible issues with bogus
versions on the release notes.
Here is the error:
Preparing to replace dpkg 1.15.7.2 (using
.../archives/dpkg_1.15.8_amd64.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement dpkg ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
dpkg: parse error, in file '/var/lib/dpkg/available' near line 60680
package 'virtualbox-3.0':
error in Version string `3.0.12-54655_Debian_lenny': invalid character in
revision number
Actualy, I now seem to be unable to remove the virtualbox package to
remedy the problem as I initialy planned, leaving my system
unupgradable. This is going to be fun.
You can edit /var/lib/dpkg/available by hand, but it might be easier
to try something like this patch.
Yeah, editing the available and status files should be the fastest
workaround.
As for a proper solution: I have no idea. I am not sure dpkg should
be enforcing policy like this. It might be better to check sanity
by excluding empty strings and some *forbidden* characters and
leaving the rest to checkers like lintian.
I was a bit hesitant too when introducing those checks in dpkg, for
the same reason. But then considered this, the version syntax is
something the Debian (and derived) ecosystem relies on, with parsers,
tools, etc, needing a common definition of it, so it's a matter of
interoperability, and in this case dpkg is not checking how a package
uses date style version or similar, just its syntax. In the same
way it checks for the package name syntax for example. Checking for
forbidden characters instead of allowed ones is going to be prone to
error. And finally, dpkg-dev has been doing stricter version checks
for some time now too.
diff --git a/lib/dpkg/parsehelp.c b/lib/dpkg/parsehelp.c
index 5d80213..ed3aba8 100644
--- a/lib/dpkg/parsehelp.c
+++ b/lib/dpkg/parsehelp.c
@@ -253,7 +253,7 @@ const char *parseversion(struct versionrevision
*rversion, const char *string) {
return _(invalid character in version number);
}
for (ptr = rversion-revision; *ptr; ptr++) {
-if (!cisdigit(*ptr) !cisalpha(*ptr) strchr(.-+~, *ptr) == NULL)
+if (!cisdigit(*ptr) !cisalpha(*ptr) strchr(.-+~_, *ptr) == NULL)
return _(invalid character in revision number);
}
I'll consider whether to do something about these bug reports for
tomorrow's upload, mostly because this is a regression from the point
of view of the user, that had a working dpkg before the upgrade and
it suddenly stopped working. But I'm tending to think about this as
wontfix.
thanks,
guillem
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