Debian Bug report logs - #13755
dpkg does weird things with NFS mounted filesystems

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Message #5 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Stuart Lamble <lamble@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au>

To: submit@bugs.debian.org

Subject: dpkg does weird things with NFS mounted filesystems

Date: Fri, 10 Oct 97 14:09:25 +1000

Package: dpkg
Version: 1.4.0.19

dls-helpdesk-1# mount /home
dls-helpdesk-1# ls -ld /home
drwxrwsr-x  16 root     staff        1024 Sep 11 09:53 /home
dls-helpdesk-1# df /home
Filesystem         1024 blocks  Used Available Capacity Mounted on
debian:/home
                     1486339  893250   516281     63%   /home
dls-helpdesk-1# cd /home/ftp/pub/debian/hamm/hamm/binary-i386
dls-helpdesk-1# dpkg -iGROE .
(break the process)
dls-helpdesk-1# ls -ld /home
-r--r--r--   1 root     root       307616 Jul 22 01:55 /home
dls-helpdesk-1# cd /
dls-helpdesk-1# umount /home
dls-helpdesk-1# ls -ld /home
drwxrwsr-x   3 root     staff        1024 Oct  9 15:19 /home
dls-helpdesk-1# dpkg -l
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name            Version        Description
+++-===============-==============-============================================
ii  adduser         3.5            Add users and groups to the system.
ii  ae              962-14         Anthony's Editor -- a tiny full-screen edito
ii  base-files      1.3.5          Debian Base System Miscellaneous Files
ii  base-passwd     1.3.1          
ii  bash            2.01-5         The GNU Bourne Again SHell
ii  bsdutils        3.1.3          Basic utilities from 4.4BSD-Lite.
ii  debianutils     1.5            Miscellaneous utilities specific to Debian.
ii  dialog          0.9a-10        Displays user-friendly dialog boxes from she
ii  diff            2.7-13         File comparison utilities
ii  dpkg            1.4.0.19       Package maintenance system for Debian Linux
ii  dpkg-ftp        1.4.9          Ftp method for dselect.
ii  e2fsprogs       1.10-2         The EXT2 file system utilities.
ii  elvis-tiny      1.4-3          Tiny vi compatible editor for the base syste
ii  fdflush         1.0.0-7        A disk-flushing program.
ii  fileutils       3.16-2         GNU file management utilities.
ii  findutils       4.1-22         utilities for finding files--find, xargs, an
ri  getty           1.45a-3        agetty, an alternative Linux getty
ii  grep            2.0-11         GNU grep, egrep and fgrep.
ii  gzip            1.2.4-15       The GNU compression utility.
ii  hostname        2.01           A utility to set/show the host name or domai
ii  isapnptools     1.9-1          ISA Plug-And-Play configuration utilities.
ii  kbd             0.92-3.1       Linux console font and keytable utilities.
ii  ldso            1.9.6-2        The Linux dynamic linker, library and utilit
ii  libc5           5.4.33-3       The Linux C library version 5 (run-time libr
ii  libc6           2.0.5c-0.1     The GNU C library version 2 (run-time files)
ii  libdb1          1.85.4-4       The Berkeley database routines (runtime vers
ii  libg++272       2.7.2.5-3      The GNU C++ libraries (ELF version).
ii  libgdbm1        1.7.3-22       GNU dbm database routines (runtime version).
ii  libnet          1.01-3         Implementation of Internet protocols for Per
ii  libreadline2    2.1-7          GNU readline and history libraries, run-time
ii  libreadlineg2   2.1-7          GNU readline and history libraries, run-time
ii  lilo            19-2           LInux LOader - Loads Linux from the hard dis
ii  login           961025-2       Sign on to the system.
ii  makedev         1.6-4          Creates special device files in /dev.
ii  mawk            1.3.3-1        a pattern scanning and text processing langu
ii  mbr             1.0.0-5        Master Boot Record for IBM-PC compatible com
ii  modconf         0.2.12         Device Driver Configuration
ii  modutils        2.1.34-5       Linux module utilities.
ii  mount           2.6d-1         Tools for mounting and manipulating filesyst
ii  ncurses-base    1.9.9e-1       Video terminal manipulation: Minimum set of 
ii  ncurses-bin     1.9.9e-1       Video terminal manipulation: associated prog
ii  ncurses3.0      1.9.9e-2       Old libc5 curses - shared libraries
ii  ncurses3.4      1.9.9g-4       Video terminal manipulation - shared librari
ii  netbase         2.13-1         Basic TCP/IP networking binaries
ii  passwd          961025-2       Change and administer password and group dat
ii  ppp             2.2.0f-23      Point-to-Point Protocol (PPP) daemon.
ii  procps          1.12.2         The /proc file system utilities.
ii  sed             2.05-12        The GNU sed stream editor.
ii  setserial       2.12-2         Controls configuration of serial ports.
ii  shellutils      1.16-2         The GNU shell programming utilities.
ii  sysklogd        1.3-17         Kernel and system logging daemons
ii  syslinux        1.30-2         Boot disk creator.
ii  sysvinit        2.71-2         System-V like init.
ii  tar             1.11.8-11      GNU tar
ii  textutils       1.22-1         The GNU text file processsing utilities.
ri  timezone        7.55-2         Data files needed to set your local time
ii  update          1.2-1          daemon to periodically flush filesystem buff
ii  util-linux      2.5-12         Miscellaneous system utilities.



For what it's worth, /home is exported to this machine with options "rw"
(root squashing is at its default - on - state.)

This means that I can't do an upgrade using NFS mounting - annoying to say
the least. Right now, I'm using the FTP method; I'd prefer not to have to
allow for the disk space requirements of the .debs, though (I know, if I'm
that tight for disk space... ;-)

If it helps, I can probably forward a copy of what ends up being called
/home.

Message #10 received at submit@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: joost@rulcmc.leidenuniv.nl (joost witteveen)

To: lamble@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au, 13755@bugs.debian.org

Cc: submit@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#13755: dpkg does weird things with NFS mounted filesystems

Date: Fri, 10 Oct 1997 11:26:51 +0200 (CEST)

> 
> Package: dpkg
> Version: 1.4.0.19
> 
> dls-helpdesk-1# mount /home
> dls-helpdesk-1# ls -ld /home
> drwxrwsr-x  16 root     staff        1024 Sep 11 09:53 /home
> dls-helpdesk-1# df /home
> Filesystem         1024 blocks  Used Available Capacity Mounted on
> debian:/home
>                      1486339  893250   516281     63%   /home
> dls-helpdesk-1# cd /home/ftp/pub/debian/hamm/hamm/binary-i386
> dls-helpdesk-1# dpkg -iGROE .
> (break the process)
> dls-helpdesk-1# ls -ld /home
> -r--r--r--   1 root     root       307616 Jul 22 01:55 /home

FWIW, I've done many upgrades this way in the past, with
bo and older versions of dpkg. It always used to work.

I'm really amased by the behaviour you see, and personally don't
really think it's dpkg's fault. Maybe it's some postinst that
does this? (strange, too, though!).

Does it reproduce?

-- 
joost witteveen, joostje@debian.org
#!/usr/bin/perl -sp0777i<X+d*lMLa^*lN%0]dsXx++lMlN/dsM0<j]dsj
$/=unpack('H*',$_);$_=`echo 16dio\U$k"SK$/SM$n\EsN0p[lN*1
lK[d2%Sa2/d0$^Ixp"|dc`;s/\W//g;$_=pack('H*',/((..)*)$/)
#what's this? see http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

Message #20 received at 13755@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Stuart Lamble <lamble@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au>

To: 13755@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#13755: dpkg does weird things with NFS mounted filesystems

Date: Sun, 12 Oct 97 10:32:01 +1000

joost@rulcmc.leidenuniv.nl (joost witteveen) wrote:
[...]
>FWIW, I've done many upgrades this way in the past, with
>bo and older versions of dpkg. It always used to work.
>
>I'm really amased by the behaviour you see, and personally don't
>really think it's dpkg's fault. Maybe it's some postinst that
>does this? (strange, too, though!).

Now that I think about it, the problem may be (at least partially) due
to a bug in one of
  the kernel's NFS handling
  other NFS-related software.

Odds are that dpkg is just demonstrating the flaw elsewhere... I honestly
don't know, as I haven't had the time to thoroughly inspect this problem.
(too much work to do on my honours thesis, too little time, and some
health hassles as well... *sighs*)

It _is_ strange, though, that the problem exhibits itself irrespective of
where the filesystem is mounted..that I definitely wouldn't have expected.

Message #25 received at 13755@bugs.debian.org (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Stuart Lamble <lamble@yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au>

To: joost@rulcmc.leidenuniv.nl (joost witteveen)

Cc: 13755@bugs.debian.org

Subject: Re: Bug#13755: dpkg does weird things with NFS mounted filesystems

Date: Sun, 12 Oct 97 09:03:39 +1000

joost@rulcmc.leidenuniv.nl (joost witteveen) wrote:
[symptoms snipped]
>FWIW, I've done many upgrades this way in the past, with
>bo and older versions of dpkg. It always used to work.

I know - I was stunned when this happened.

>I'm really amased by the behaviour you see, and personally don't
>really think it's dpkg's fault. Maybe it's some postinst that
>does this? (strange, too, though!).

Definitely.. but I very much doubt it's a postinst, preinst, or other
package script that's causing the problem. It always happens on this
machine, whether I use NFS mounting via dselect (in which case the
problem occurs on /var/dpkg/methods/mnt, or similar), or whether I
manually mount the filesystem. It's consistent in that the mount point
for the NFS filesystem changed from being a directory to that file -
which looks remarkably like a Debian package, btw. (when I open it using
less, that is.)

>Does it reproduce?

Yes. I tried this four or five times, and it consistently occurred on
this machine. I haven't tried it on any other machines - mainly because
they are all operating quite happily with bo, and I definitely don't
want to break a working, production machine with a premature upgrade to
hamm. (This particular machine is one I use when I'm rostered on the
phones at work, so I'm not overly concerned about any problems hamm
may have :)

I wouldn't have reported it as a bug if it hadn't occurred several times.
(Hmm... wonder if rebooting the machine would fix the problem.. then again,
now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I did so.) I ended up doing the
installation via FTP.

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