This fix will now get along with a completely empty /var/lib/apt/lists/. Note that the directory /var/lib/apt/lists/partial/ itself still needs to be present (otherwise apt/python-apt will try to re-create it), but it does not need to contain any files any more. This should address this immediate bug and is unintrusive. I uploaded it to wily now and also uploaded a backport to the overlay PPA (2.17.2-0ubuntu1.3touch1). I tested this on mako on the rc-proposed/ubuntu channel, image #228.
This does not yet address snappy as completely dropping the dpkg database will lose any association of a file to a package, and thus also disable package hooks and the like. It's conceivable to write a completely new packaging backend for snappy which doesn't use dpkg/apt any more. But this shouldn't just be a drive-by bug report and is a lot of work: * Snappy team should discuss what kind of bug reports and crashes they expect for the snappy OS itself. I suppose this should not apply to third-party snaps but only the Ubuntu-provided minimal OS (or rather big desktop in case of personal). E. g. we supposedly don't need any kind of "Package:" error, we might not want the normal Ubuntu package hooks. Also, do you want the usual Package:/Dependencies: information, or something simpler (just the image version, etc.)? * Snappy team should discuss what kind of UI they want: Should crash reports be always sent non-interactively, phone style? Or should there be some UI to address privacy issues? * Is apport even still the right tool for this, or overly complex for Snappy and you actually just care for crashes? (There are alternatives like http://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/coredumpctl.html) * If the above discussion decides that the snappy team still wants the features of apport, we need a new apport packaging backend which can implement the API in http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~apport- hackers/apport/trunk/view/head:/apport/packaging.py without referring to dpkg/apt. I. e. this would mostly mean to provide an online service to map a file to a package, a file and a system image version to a package version, map a package of a particular version/system image to its dependencies, etc. I. e. the snappy side of this requires some discussions and a proper blueprint. This shouldn't block this immediate phone issue which is apparently rather urgent, so I went ahead with the above simple and focussed fix. ** Changed in: canonical-devices-system-image Status: Confirmed => Fix Committed -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to apport in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1489410 Title: do not require apt lists to be pre-installed Status in Canonical System Image: Fix Committed Status in apport package in Ubuntu: Fix Committed Bug description: On the phone images the space required for the lists in /var/lib/apt/lists is excessive (around 70MB) for the device targets we have. The partition it currently resides in did not include this requirement when their size was specified. Removing those prevents one from using apport-cli to report bugs about packages that are from the -updates pocket. This is due to the fact that apport will not allow one to report bugs about packages which it cannot determine are from the official archive or a native origin PPA. Possible solutions include generating the list dynamically as part of the writable partition or including a smaller simpler manifest. This report was inspired by bug #1471903 To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/canonical-devices-system-image/+bug/1489410/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
