[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#776063: dbus fails to upgrade rendering entire apt unusable

[Simon McVittie]

Control: tags 776063 + moreinfo

On 23/01/15 14:43, Niels Thykier wrote:
> On Fri, 23 Jan 2015 09:07:37 -0500 Yaroslav Halchenko
> <debian at onerussian.com> wrote:
>> Decided to upgrade my jessie/sid system today to see if remedy for hangouts not
>> working came about (#770659) and upgrade failed because of dbus.
>
> Thanks for reporting this issue.  This is likely to be a bug in APT (or
> possibly in its interaction with dpkg), so I have CC'ed the relevant
> maintainers.

This looks very much like <https://bugs.debian.org/771428>.

On #771428, David Kalnischkies wrote:
> This looks a lot like one of the buggy dpkg versions we had in
> unstable. Please check which dpkg version is used here. If it is
> between 1.17.17 and 1.17.21 there isn't much we can do about it. You
> might have to look up the version in /var/log/apt/history.log as the
> full-upgrade has potentially involved dpkg as well. If the status
> wasn't in complete proper order before running apt the version
> requirement raises to 1.17.22 (which e.g. would be true for your
> --fix-broken call).
>
> If not or if you aren't sure you can look at /var/backups/dpkg.status*
> files. Find the one dated from before your upgrade and attach it if
> possible (the file contains information about all packages installed
> and in which version. If you don't want or can't (e.g. if it is
> against corporate policy) make this public, you can also mail it just
> to me – in case you find this acceptable as a compromise of course).

/var/log/apt/history.log, /var/log/apt/term.log are probably also
interesting information.

https://bugs.debian.org/774124 (merged with 771428) is also relevant.

I think the reason this is always getting reported against dbus is that
it's "low-level" in dependency trees (e.g. for systemd), but it also has
file triggers (for system services); so when its file triggers encounter
one of dpkg/apt's recent trigger-related bugs, the system is left in a
rather bad state. If any apt or dpkg experts can come up with an
adjustment to dbus that would work around this, I'm open to suggestions.

    S