> chromium-browser requires a newer version of libnss3 than what was
initially installed.

It is the job of the package manager to either upgrade an outdated
version of a dependency package when the user tries to install something
or to ask the user to update the system first and then try again, not to
silently install a package with its requirement missing and leave the
user wondering what exactly happened.

The bug is that apt-get does not know that, probably because the
package-metadata is missing the information. The expected behavior here
is that "sudo apt-get install -y chromium-browser" does also upgrade
libnss3 when the libnss3 version currently installed is not enough to
run chromium-browser. Or to have it report an error saying something
like "your system must be updated before you can install this".

My understanding is that this requirement is not recorded in the
chromium-browser package metadata, so when an user tries to install the
package, the apt-get fails to pull in the correct version of libnss3,
leading to a broken package being installed.

> This is not a bug in chromium or libnss itself.

Agree. The bug in in the chromium-browser package metadata which does
not record the minimal libnss3 version necessary correctly, leading to
apt-get believing that "what was initially installed" is sufficient even
though it is not.

> A half-updated system is in an inconstistent state, and will
> result in undefined behaviours like this crash.

1. The system should be in a consistent state when just being
   freshly installed. If it is not, then the official
   installation image of the distribution is broken.
   There is no updating during the installation process nor
   any administrative commands being forcibly aborted
   afterwards.
2. If apt-get install <something> brings the system into an
   inconsistent state, then the <something> (or one of its
   dependencies) has broken or incomplete metadata which
   should get fixed. In the case of this bug the
   incomplete/broken metadata is missing "minimal version"
   for libnss3 in the chromium-browser package dependencies.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1821403

Title:
  chromium browser crash on fresh offline system install

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