[Bug 646834] Re: APT gives unclear error message: "something wicked happened" when hostname of archive cannot be found

[Marcus Haslam]

I'm out of the office until 1st August.

On 20 Apr 2011, at 16:57, David Kalnischkies  
<646834 at bugs.launchpad.net> wrote:

> The question is not if its another application at fault - it a message
> from APT all front-ends see if the conditions are meet. The question  
> is
> just if these conditions are likely to be hit: The answer to this is  
> no
> as this message was already changed "recently" (2009) to include the
> errno and the string connected to this of the underlying method used.
> The message from APT is just "something wicked happened" which isn't  
> the
> best, but somehow an old tradition for error messages in APT to be
> "wicked" than nobody could imagine a better message so far.
>
> The message you really complain here is "No address associated with
> hostname" which doesn't come from APT (directly) but from the method
> getaddrinfo() from (e)(g)libc. The most common error conditions
> (EAI_NONAME, EAI_SERVICE and EAI_AGAIN) from it are captured and a
> "better" message is provided, but for all other (most notable the one
> here: EAI_NODATA) APT doesn't try to provide one as so far nobody  
> knows
> how to describe it in a way that someone could understand it without
> deeper knowledge of networks who happens to don't understand the  
> message
> from getaddrinfo…
>
> But if someone has a good one: Feel free to suggest it! Maybe, we  
> should
> even change it in (e)(g)libc then…
>
>
> P.S.: That the message was changed in 2009 was a result of a bug in  
> eglibc triggered by a missing /etc/hostname, before and since then i  
> have never seen it in real life and the bug obviously only existed  
> in debian unstable…
>
> -- 
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> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/646834
>
> Title:
>  APT gives unclear error message: "something wicked happened" when
>  hostname of archive cannot be found
>
> Status in One Hundred Paper Cuts:
>  Triaged
> Status in “aptdaemon” package in Ubuntu:
>  Triaged
>
> Bug description:
>  When something wicked happens when trying to download packages, this
>  is the error message one gets:
>
>  "something wicked happened resolving 'dk.archive.ubuntu.com:http' (-5
>  - No address associated with hostname)"
>
>  This error message does not say anything about whether the error is
>  local (ie. something the user has any chance to do anything about) or
>  related to other things (is the host server down? Or is the DNS- 
> server
>  failing to do its deed?)
>
>  Generally, the text isn't very newbie friendly

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/646834

Title:
  APT gives unclear error message: "something wicked happened" when
  hostname of archive cannot be found

Status in One Hundred Paper Cuts:
  Triaged
Status in “aptdaemon” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  When something wicked happens when trying to download packages, this
  is the error message one gets:

  "something wicked happened resolving 'dk.archive.ubuntu.com:http' (-5
  - No address associated with hostname)"

  This error message does not say anything about whether the error is
  local (ie. something the user has any chance to do anything about) or
  related to other things (is the host server down? Or is the DNS-server
  failing to do its deed?)

  Generally, the text isn't very newbie friendly

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