[Koha-devel] dselect non-funcitonal on Ubuntu

[Tomas Cohen Arazi]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 12:36 PM, MJ Ray <mjr at phonecoop.coop> wrote:
> Tomas Cohen Arazi <tomascohen at gmail.com>
>> This simple test probes dselect is currently broken on Ubuntu amd64
>> 12.04/10.04 (as root):
>
> I don't think it is generally broken.  "dselect install" runs without
> problems on a 10.04 server near me (through sudo).

Running through sudo wont make any difference (for this testing
purposes). I think that being broken for multiarch, which has become a
default for ubuntu, means this install method is actually broken.

>> $ echo "apache2 install" | dpkg --set-selections
>> $ dselect install
>> Reading package lists... Done
>> Building dependency tree
>> Reading state information... Done
>> The following NEW packages will be installed:
>>   gcc-4.6-base:i386 libasn1-8-heimdal:i386 libc6:i386 libcap2:i386
>> libcomerr2:i386 libdb5.1:i386 libexpat1:i386 libgcc1:i386
>> libgcrypt11:i386
>>   libgnutls26:i386 libgpg-error0:i386 libgssapi3-heimdal:i386
>> libhcrypto4-heimdal:i386 libheimbase1-heimdal:i386
>> libheimntlm0-heimdal:i386
>>   libhx509-5-heimdal:i386 libkrb5-26-heimdal:i386 libldap-2.4-2:i386
>> libp11-kit0:i386 libpcre3:i386 libroken18-heimdal:i386 libsasl2-2:i386
>>   libsasl2-modules:i386 libsqlite3-0:i386 libssl1.0.0:i386
>> libtasn1-3:i386 libuuid1:i386 libwind0-heimdal:i386 zlib1g:i386
>> 0 upgraded, 29 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
>> Need to get 8,500 kB of archives.
>> After this operation, 22.2 MB of additional disk space will be used.
>> Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
>
> That just looks like some other dselect selections are set.  They
> might be security updates and other available upgrades, because I
> think dselect just does those without asking.  Try running dselect and
> picking "Select" from its menu to check what is set and, if needed,
> clearing any that aren't wanted.  Maybe there is no suitable apache2
> to install. I suspect the key thing is the ":i386" on there.  I never
> see anything like that when running dselect.  Maybe this is
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/879324

Belive me:
1) There's no upgrades scheduled in my PVM (did apt-get update ;
apt-get dist-upgrade first)
2) There are no schedulled selections:

root at koha-dev:/usr/local/src/koha-community-src# dselect install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Do you want to erase any previously downloaded .deb files? [Y/n]
Press enter to continue.
root at koha-dev:/usr/local/src/koha-community-src# echo "apache2
install" | dpkg --set-selections
root at koha-dev:/usr/local/src/koha-community-src# dselect install
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  gcc-4.6-base:i386 libasn1-8-heimdal:i386 libc6:i386 libcap2:i386
libcomerr2:i386 libdb5.1:i386 libexpat1:i386 libgcc1:i386
libgcrypt11:i386
  libgnutls26:i386 libgpg-error0:i386 libgssapi3-heimdal:i386
libhcrypto4-heimdal:i386 libheimbase1-heimdal:i386
libheimntlm0-heimdal:i386
  libhx509-5-heimdal:i386 libkrb5-26-heimdal:i386 libldap-2.4-2:i386
libp11-kit0:i386 libpcre3:i386 libroken18-heimdal:i386 libsasl2-2:i386
  libsasl2-modules:i386 libsqlite3-0:i386 libssl1.0.0:i386
libtasn1-3:i386 libuuid1:i386 libwind0-heimdal:i386 zlib1g:i386
0 upgraded, 29 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 8,500 kB of archives.
After this operation, 22.2 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? n
Abort.
root at koha-dev:/usr/local/src/koha-community-src# apt-get install apache2
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  apache2-mpm-worker apache2-utils apache2.2-bin apache2.2-common
libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
Suggested packages:
  www-browser apache2-doc apache2-suexec apache2-suexec-custom
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  apache2 apache2-mpm-worker apache2-utils apache2.2-bin
apache2.2-common libaprutil1-dbd-sqlite3 libaprutil1-ldap
0 upgraded, 7 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,679 kB of archives.
After this operation, 5,064 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

>> So I propose the removal of dselect usage from the docs and use of
>> simple apt-get commands (perhaps providing a convenient script).
>
> Ouch! That seems like an overreaction to strange output on some
> system.

As installing on (amd64) Ubuntu is currently broken using those
files/docs (as I see it), and this files are Ubuntu-specific I'm not
sure its just *some* system, but the target system of those files.
This is not the first time we talk about this
(http://koha.1045719.n5.nabble.com/Ubuntu-support-td5720379.html) but
I understand its not a issue for most of the people on the list. I've
been actually doing this to get things installed:

cat install_misc/ubuntu.12.04.packages | grep -v "#" | grep [a-A] |
cut -f1 | xargs apt-get install --assume-yes

so I don't need this, but the non-tech user does.

> I would hope that QA rejects most scripts designed to be run as root.
> It is very wrong to encourage root to do "sh script.sh" or
> "./script.sh" during installation, because it could do absolutely
> anything to the system (think man-in-the-middle attack, or some
> unforseen situation which leads to a script doing rm -rf /).  It's far
> safer to ask people to load in package lists to an apt frontend.
>
> We could use "apt-get dselect-upgrade" as dselect is just an apt
> frontend, but it's one we can manipulate in bulk through dpkg.
>
> If dselect isn't working for some people, can we bulk-update apt
> another way, then just let it run?

I agree. And understand why you prefer the dselect front-end. Its just
broken on Ubuntu right now. As we are encouraging people to use
packages I understand that changing this wouldn't affect anyone also.

Regards
To+