[Bug 503765] Re: aptitude pkgstates gets corrupted

[Sergio Callegari]

See also

https://lists.debian.org/debian-dpkg/2012/03/msg00063.html

where it says

As above, most of pkgstates is actually private to aptitude.  Some of
it is duplicated for convenience, however, aptitude does take measures
to keep in sync. with dpkg/apt when it is started.  *Admitedly, this
process fails quite often.*   (emphasis is mine)

and

For example, removing a package with apt-get can lead to aptitude
trying to reinstall that package.  *Note that aptitude is aware that
the package has been removed, it just mistakenly believes the user has
requested it be installed again.*

So, it looks like aptitude is remembering pending actions, even when
they are not anymore relevant or applicable.

IMHO, this 'session' idea of aptitude is quite wrong in itself. You just
cannot remember pending actions without having a lock on the package
database, preventing others from changing the system state. I suggest
modifying the packaging of aptitude to set up a cron script erasing
pkgstates every night.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/503765

Title:
  aptitude pkgstates gets corrupted

Status in “aptitude” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: aptitude

  On four different machines (one 32 bit, two 64bit), I am recently
  experiencing corruptions in the package status database private to
  aptitude, namely /var/lib/aptitude/pkgstates.

  This results in a crazy behavior of aptitude, that starts thinking
  that many packages are broken when in fact they are not.  For
  instance.

  aptitude install
  Reading package lists... Done                    
  Building dependency tree                         
  Reading state information... Done                
  Reading extended state information               
  Initializing package states... Done              
  The following packages are BROKEN:               
    apturl gnome-app-install libgpod4 libgpod4-nogtk mysql-server-core-5.1 rsyslog wine1.2 
  The following NEW packages will be installed:                                            
    acl binutils-static emacs22 emacs22-bin-common emacs22-common firefox-3.0-branding gcj-4.3 
    gfortran-4.3 gij gnome-mount imagemagick-doc klogd libavutil-unstripped-49                 
    libboost-regex1.34.1 libboost-serialization1.34.1 libfame-0.9 libgcj9-0-awt libgcj9-dev
    libggi-target-x libggi2 libgii1 libgii1-target-x libgmyth0 liblrdf0 libpolkit-gnome0
    libpvm3 libsmbios2 libsoprano-dev libwxbase2.6-0 libwxgtk2.6-0 mysql-server-core-5.0
    nvidia-180-kernel-source nvidia-180-libvdpau policykit-gnome pvm python-gconf
    python-gst0.10 python-launchpad-integration python-pyorbit python-sexy sysklogd
    ttf-bengali-fonts ttf-kannada-fonts ttf-oriya-fonts ttf-telugu-fonts update-motd wine
    wine-gecko

  This is very very dangerous, because, following up with its crazy
  diagnosis, aptitude starts suggesting actions that can completely
  break a system.

  And the crazyness of aptitude can be very easily seen by considering
  that for apt-get, synaptic and all the other front-ends to dpkg
  everything is just fine.

  Interestingly, aptitude starts reporting as broken either packages
  that are installed and packages that are not installed.  If one tries
  an

  aptitude remove <package that is not installed but is reported as
  broken>

  then aptitude does nothing, but the behavior of aptitude after this
  sanifies a bit.

  removing /var/lib/aptitude/pkgstates completely fixes the issue.

  In the "wrong" pkgstates, it looks like many entries are just weird.
  For instance, installed packages are indicated as unseen, and after
  pkgstates is removed and re-generated, for many packages the state is
  then different.

  
  I tend to think that bug reports 477468 and 39497 are in fact caused by this very problem, so I suggest marking those as duplicate of this one.

  ProblemType: Bug
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Wed Jan  6 12:47:37 2010
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  Package: aptitude 0.4.11.11-1ubuntu6
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-16.53-generic
  SourcePackage: aptitude
  Uname: Linux 2.6.31-16-generic x86_64

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