[Bug 1603373] Re: Retry failures due to broken dependencies automatically

[Martin Pitt]

>From autopkgtest (as in "the thing that prepares a testbbed and runs the
test in it") this is correct -- the test fails, and there is no robust
way to automatically tell whether this is to be blamed on the package
itself or a forward or reverse dependency. Also, autopkgtest is just a
command, it cannot "retry" itself. So moving to the infrastructure
project.

Just blindly retrying every 24 hours is arbitrary and pointless. E. g.
in this case repowerd is just broken and needs to be fixed, there is no
use in retrying it on a time basis. It *would* make sense to retry it
once repowerd gets fixed, but since this is neither the trigger nor the
test here, this would require complex state keeping of transitive test
dependencies, heuristics on parsing build logs (which are hard to
define, easy to get wrong, never complete, and just raise expectancies
that we can ever fulfill). I wontfix this, as creating and maintaining
this is magnitudes more work than just retrying tests after a package
got fixed. Note that bug 1491145  is about an important subset of this
problem which is reasonably easy to fix, so I will do that.

So, the real problem is that repowerd fails -- this needs to be fixed in
either case, will affect your project (thumbnailer) on actual
installations as  well, and isn't an actual problem with the test or the
test infra.

** Package changed: autopkgtest (Ubuntu) => auto-package-testing

** Changed in: auto-package-testing
       Status: New => Won't Fix

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1603373

Title:
  Retry failures due to broken dependencies automatically

Status in Auto Package Testing:
  Won't Fix

Bug description:
  I had an autopkg test failure for thumbnailer. Excerpt from the log:

  Setting up indicator-datetime (15.10+15.04.20160629-0ubuntu1) ...
  Setting up libubuntu-application-api3:i386 (3.0.1+15.04.20160613-0ubuntu1) ...
  Setting up repowerd (2016.06+15.04.20160706.1-0ubuntu1) ...
  Failed to start repowerd.service: Unit lxc-android-config.service failed to load: No such file or directory.
  invoke-rc.d: initscript repowerd, action "start" failed.
  dpkg: error processing package repowerd (--configure):
   subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 6
  dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of powerd:
   powerd depends on repowerd (>= 2016.06+15.04.20160706.1-0ubuntu1); however:
    Package repowerd is not configured yet.
  [ Lots more errors here... ]

  This has nothing to do with thumbnailer itself.

  I can bug a core dev every day to restart the test until things
  finally work again. But the problem is that I have to get on someone's
  nerves, and I have to remember to do it.

  If we could distinguish autopkg test failures due to broken
  dependencies from failures due to the test itself falling over, we
  could potentially automate the restarts. Say do a retry once every 24
  hours or so. I think it would streamline the process a bit, make it
  more reliable, and avoid people having to remember to look after this
  and then forgetting.

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