[Bug 2125535] Re: makeself archive failing md5sum validation [dd: partial write to slow reader]

[Launchpad Bug Tracker]

This bug was fixed in the package rust-coreutils - 0.2.2-0ubuntu2.1

---------------
rust-coreutils (0.2.2-0ubuntu2.1) questing; urgency=medium

  * Cherry pick fixes from pull requests
    - date: use reference file (LP: #2127970)
    - dd: ensure full writes (LP: #2125535)

 -- Julian Andres Klode <juliank at ubuntu.com>  Wed, 22 Oct 2025 12:39:11
+0200

** Changed in: rust-coreutils (Ubuntu Questing)
       Status: Fix Committed => Fix Released

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2125535

Title:
  makeself archive failing md5sum validation [dd: partial write to slow
  reader]

Status in Release Notes for Ubuntu:
  New
Status in makeself package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in rust-coreutils package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Committed
Status in makeself source package in Questing:
  New
Status in rust-coreutils source package in Questing:
  Fix Released
Status in makeself source package in Resolute:
  Confirmed
Status in rust-coreutils source package in Resolute:
  Fix Committed

Bug description:
  [Impact]
  Users are unable to install VirtualBox guest extensions amongst other packages, due to dd inadvertently not writing all file content to slow readers, resulting in the makeself archives failing their selfcheck.

  [Test plan]
  Get the ISO from the virtualbox-guest-additions-iso package, and try to run VBoxLinuxAdditions.run inside of it.

  Failure: The script fails at the self-check
  Verifying archive integritiy... 100% Error in MD5 checksums: ...

  Pass: The script passes the self-check
  Verifying archive integrity...  100%   MD5 checksums are OK. All good.
  Uncompressing VirtualBox 7.2.2 Guest Additions for Linux  100%

  To cover regressions, rust-coreutils contains a test suite and GNU
  coreutils contain a test suite, which is also run against the Rust
  coreutils and will be triggered by the test.

  [Where problems could occur]
  Given that this covers retrying, it's plausible it might retry indefinitely in some corner cases, but the change is minimal:

  -                    // take iflags.fullblock as oflags shall not have this option
  -                    if (base_idx >= full_len) || !self.settings.iflags.fullblock {
  +                    if base_idx >= full_len {

  It's essentially changing the behavior to be like fullblock for
  writes, always, so it should be fine as you can already set this
  option.

  It seems the newly added tests in the test suite do not adequately
  test the fix, this is still a point of contention for merging it
  upstream, but must not block us from fixing this.

  [Original bug report]
  Still trying to find causes, but this sympton:

  for a 25.10 guest image, the virtualbox guest additions install
  (VBoxLinuxAdditions.run from the official ISO) fails checksum.  The
  Linux installer script is a makeself self-extracting archive (makeself
  is a Ubuntu package, though I don't know if the VirtualBox team uses
  Ubuntu to generate the archive). The output of trying to run this
  script is:

  # ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run --noexec
  Verifying archive integritiy... 100% Error in MD5 checksums: c8ea742682d7024e581f916c763818c9 is different from 201ccc47587bb1c28745279e8b7fdd30

  The 201ccc signature is the one embedded in the script. On a 25.04
  system, there is no checksum complaint:

  # ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run --noexec
  Verifying archive integrity...  100%   MD5 checksums are OK. All good.
  Uncompressing VirtualBox 7.2.2 Guest Additions for Linux  100%

  I was sure this was due to the switchover of the waste-of-time
  coreutils rust rewrite (please ignore the editorial comment!)... but
  copying over coreutuils md5sum from 25.04 does not eliminate the
  error.

  Tar on both systems is 1.35.

  md5sum on today's (23 Sep) 25.10 reports: md5sum (uutils coreutils) 0.1.0
  on 25.04 where there's no failure it's: md5sum (GNU coreutils) 9.5
  but as noted, that exact binary moved to 25.10 to replace /usr/bin/md5sum does not improve matters there.

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