[Bug 920903] Re: Aptitude does not show reliably if a package is installed

[Daniel Hartwig]

*** This bug is a duplicate of bug 884945 ***
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/884945

** This bug has been marked a duplicate of bug 884945
   aptitude show wrong package state

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/920903

Title:
  Aptitude does not show reliably if a package is installed

Status in “aptitude” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  I have set up a new "oneiric" system (in a virtual machine) with
  architecture x86-64 from a minimal image ("net install"), installed
  some additional software, and installed all patches.

  I have to mention that I did not select a predefined installation set
  (like "desktop", "server", "developer" etc.), but did the minimal
  install and then installed package by package what I needed, always
  using no other command than aptitude, and of course always following
  the recommends.

  After some weeks, I was wondering why saslauthd had been installed; so
  I used apt-file to investigate. apt-file showed me that saslauthd
  belongs to package sasl2-bin. Therefore I was looking for all sasl
  packages being installed with the following commands and results:

  root at baldur:~# aptitude search sasl
  p   cyrus-sasl2-dbg                                     - Cyrus SASL - debugging symbols
  p   cyrus-sasl2-doc                                     - Cyrus SASL - documentation
  p   cyrus-sasl2-heimdal-dbg                             - Cyrus SASL - debugging symbols for Heimdal modules
  p   cyrus-sasl2-mit-dbg                                 - Cyrus SASL - debugging symbols for MIT modules
  p   gsasl                                               - GNU SASL command line utility
  p   gsasl-dbg                                           - GNU SASL debugging symbols
  p   libapache2-mod-authn-sasl                           - SASL authentication backend provider for Apache
  p   libauthen-sasl-cyrus-perl                           - Perl extension for Cyrus SASL library
  p   libauthen-sasl-perl                                 - Authen::SASL - SASL Authentication framework
  p   libgsasl7                                           - GNU SASL library
  p   libgsasl7-dev                                       - Development files for the GNU SASL library
  p   liblua5.1-cyrussasl-dev                             - Cyrus SASL development files for the Lua language version 5.1
  p   liblua5.1-cyrussasl0                                - Cyrus SASL library for the Lua language version 5.1
  p   libqca2-plugin-cyrus-sasl                           - QCA Cyrus SASL plugin for libqca2
  i   libsasl2-2                                          - Cyrus SASL - authentication abstraction library
  p   libsasl2-dev                                        - Cyrus SASL - development files for authentication abstraction
  i   libsasl2-modules                                    - Cyrus SASL - pluggable authentication modules
  p   libsasl2-modules-gssapi-heimdal                     - Pluggable Authentication Modules for SASL (GSSAPI)
  p   libsasl2-modules-gssapi-mit                         - Cyrus SASL - pluggable authentication modules (GSSAPI)
  p   libsasl2-modules-ldap                               - Cyrus SASL - pluggable authentication modules (LDAP)
  p   libsasl2-modules-otp                                - Cyrus SASL - pluggable authentication modules (OTP)
  p   libsasl2-modules-sql                                - Cyrus SASL - pluggable authentication modules (SQL)
  p   php-auth-sasl                                       - Abstraction of various SASL mechanism responses
  p   php5-sasl                                           - Cyrus SASL extension for PHP 5
  p   sasl2-bin                                           - Cyrus SASL - administration programs for SASL users database
  root at baldur:~#

  Note that sasl2-bin is shown as being NOT installed.

  Wondering about that, I checked again by doing the following and got
  another result:

  root at baldur:~# aptitude search sasl2-bin
  i   sasl2-bin                                           - Cyrus SASL - administration programs for SASL users database
  root at baldur:~#

  In other words, "aptitude search sasl" tells that sasl2-bin is not
  installed, and "aptitude search sasl2-bin" tells that sasl2-bin is
  installed.

  This is somehow frustrating, isn't it? Even worse, it may lead to
  serious consequences if the package maintaining utilities think a
  package is not installed although it is, or vice versa. I don't know
  if it's just bug in aptitude's output, or if aptitude under certain
  circumstances really thinks that the package in question isn't
  installed.

  Since I am not an expert regarding apt and the package maintenance
  system, please tell me if you need further information to reproduce
  the problem.

  Regards,

  Binarus

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