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

Axel Beckert abe at debian.org
Sun Sep 30 12:28:03 UTC 2012


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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