[Pkg-sympa-devel] Bug#769074: sympa: After wheezy-backports sympa does not work at all

[Emmanuel Bouthenot]

Rudd,

On Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 09:29:19AM +0100, Ruud Baart wrote:
[...]

> My sympa installation is with a postgres database on an other server. After this (and previous) upgrades
> of sympa nothing worked. The postgres database is not updated, webinterface did not work, configuration
> files were incorrectly adjusted, files ownership incorrect. 
Sympa (itself) does not support database upgrade with postgres (but it's
ok with mysql and sqlite). It will be fixed in sympa 6.2.

So if there is schema updates with a new release of sympa, it could lead
to a broken sympa installation while using postgres.

> I do not know the reasons but I assume the post install or upgrade script made a mess.
Maybe, not sure. I'm also using sympa from wheezy backports with a
postgres database and I never encounter such issue.

That said, if you use a database on another machine, it could be one of
the reasons of your problems.

> I can't exactly remember the previous important backports upgrade but in that case:
> - the configuration files were incorrectly updated. I remember that the database
>   configuration entries in sympa.conf were overwritten. 
> - It was impossible to install  without mysql (I use postgres)
> With a lot of patience I managed to get sympa running again. 

To minimize issues during upgrade, it is strongly recommended to have
correctly answered debconf questions so that 'dpkg-reconfigure sympa'
is idemptotent.

> Last upgrade to 6.1.23:
> - Postgres database was not updated. I had to to this by hand: compare the source of 
>   6.1.23 with the existing postgres database and alter the tables by hand. Time 
>   consuming and I'm not sure everything is now correct.
One tip about that:

Next time try to use the following script:
http://kolter.openics.org/sympa_pgsql_diff.sh

It will produce a postgres schema diff between to sympa releases.

(prepare and apply the diff before upgrading with sympa stopped)

One tip for your current installation:

Extract the sql schema for your current database, download the current
sql schema from sympa sources (corresponding to your current sympa
version, here 6.1.23), install the apgdiff (with apt-get).

Run apgdiff on the two schema files, it will produce a sql diff which
will permit to fix your current installation (I recommend to make a
dry-run before applying it for real).

> - for unknown reason my webinterface did not work. A new configuration solved this 
>   problem
If debconf questions are correctly answered it should not happened

> - I presume files in /usr/lib/sympa/lib/sympa have an incorrect permission and ownership.
>   After 
>     chown sympa /usr/lib/sympa/lib/sympa/*
>     chmod u+s /usr/lib/sympa/lib/sympa/*
These action are executed in postinst so if postinst failed, it could
explain this.

[...]

>   Setting up sympa (6.1.23~dfsg-1~bpo70+1) ...
>   dpkg: error processing sympa (--configure):
>    subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 10
>   Errors were encountered while processing:
>    sympa
>   E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
To understand what is happening here, could you:

add 'set -x' after the shebang in /var/lib/dpkg/info/sympa.postinst and
run again 'apt-get -f install'

It will produce a debug log that could help.


Regards,

-- 
Emmanuel Bouthenot
  mail: kolter@{openics,debian}.org    gpg: 4096R/0x929D42C3
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