Bug#689213: pbuilder: Deletes pbuilderrc's contents and then fails to configure under some circumstances

[Junichi Uekawa]

Hi,

I've looked into your case, pbuilder doesn't delete any file.

dpkg is installing a pbuilder file; the symbollic link
/etc/pbuilder/pbuilderrc isn't a conffile and is reinstalled on every
package install, therefore you have introduced a symlink loop.

It's not entirely obvious how to fix this.

/etc/pbuilder/pbuilderrc was created just for convenience purpose and
not for editing.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=174155

Maybe that was the original problem, we should remove the
/etc/pbuilder/pbuilderrc symlik in order to remove the false
impression that you can do this.



At Sun, 30 Sep 2012 14:28:03 +0200,
Axel Beckert wrote:
> 
> Package: pbuilder
> Version: 0.212
> Severity: grave
> Justification: may cause data loss
> 
> Dear pbuilder Maintainers,
> 
> pbuilder fails to configure on wheezy (and sid) if /etc/pbuilderrc is a
> symlink to /etc/pbuilder/pbuilderrc after it replaces
> /etc/pbuilder/pbuilderrc with a symlink despite pbuilder/rewrite is set
> to false.
> 
>    * What led up to the situation?
> 
> I have my pbuilder in a git repository. Hence the complete
> /etc/pbuilder/ is under version control while /etc/pbuilderrc is not,
> but a symlink to /etc/pbuilder/pbuilderrc (to have it under version
> control).
> 
>    * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
>      ineffective)?
> 
> I upgraded today pbuilder from 0.211 to 0.212. It asked me via debconf
> if it should update pbuilderrc and I denied that question.
> 
>    * What was the outcome of this action?
> 
> Setting up pbuilder (0.212) ...
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/pbuilder.config: 40: /var/lib/dpkg/info/pbuilder.config: cannot create /etc/pbuilderrc: Too many levels of symbolic links
> dpkg: error processing pbuilder (--configure):
>  subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 2
> Processing triggers for menu ...
> Errors were encountered while processing:
>  pbuilder
> 
> And, even worse: My real pbuilderrc has been deleted despite
> pbuilder/rewrite being set to false:
> 
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Aug 23 21:53 /etc/pbuilder/pbuilderrc -> ../pbuilderrc
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 Sep 16 13:33 /etc/pbuilderrc -> pbuilder/pbuilderrc
> 
> If I wouldn't have /etc/pbuilder/ in git but choosen that layout for
> other reasons (and would have no other means of backup), my handcrafted
> pbuilderrc would have been lost.
> 
>    * What outcome did you expect instead?
> 
> That it just doesn't touch my handcrafted pbuilderrc independent of its
> location and that it still would have looked like before:
> 
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 858 Sep 30 14:20 /etc/pbuilder/pbuilderrc
> lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  19 Sep 16 13:33 /etc/pbuilderrc -> pbuilder/pbuilderrc
> 
> (A "git checkout pbuilderrc" and then a "dpkg --configure --pending"
> solved the issue for me. Nevertheless this shouldn't happen.)
> 
> -- System Information:
> Debian Release: wheezy/sid
>   APT prefers testing
>   APT policy: (500, 'testing')
> Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
> 
> Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
> Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
> Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
> 
> Versions of packages pbuilder depends on:
> ii  cdebconf [debconf-2.0]  0.175
> ii  cdebootstrap            0.5.9
> ii  coreutils               8.13-3.2
> ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]   1.5.46
> ii  debianutils             4.3.2
> ii  debootstrap             1.0.42
> ii  dpkg-dev                1.16.8
> ii  wget                    1.13.4-3
> 
> Versions of packages pbuilder recommends:
> ii  devscripts  2.12.4
> ii  fakeroot    1.18.4-2
> ii  sudo        1.8.5p2-1
> 
> Versions of packages pbuilder suggests:
> ii  cowdancer     0.70
> ii  gdebi-core    0.8.5
> pn  pbuilder-uml  <none>
> 
> -- debconf information:
>   pbuilder/mirrorsite: http://ftp.ch.debian.org/debian/
>   pbuilder/nomirror:
>   pbuilder/rewrite: false
> 
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