Package: dpkg
Version: 1.17.19
Severity: critical
Justification: breaks unrelated software
Dear Maintainer,
The problem is manifest when I run the command "dpkg --configure -a". Doing
this, the command produces no output but I see that it running flat-out on a
single core, consuming 100% of that core's CPU.
I attempted to diagnose the problem using gdb, but there's no symbolic/debug
data in the dpkg command and no package that provide this missing data.
Enabling debug output, I can see some activity from dpkg. Adding -D40 to the
command yields a stream of two-line outputs like:
D000040: checking dependencies of [package] (- <none>)
D000040: ok 1 msgs >><<
where [package] is the name of a package.
Initially the package names ("[package]" above) cover many packages, but in
successive output lines, the package "sgml-base:all" comes to dominate until
almost all lines are:
D000040: checking dependencies of sgml-base:all (- <none>)
D000040: ok 1 msgs >><<
If I filter out these two specific lines:
dpkg --configure -D40 -a 2>&1 | egrep -v "sgml-base:all|ok 1 msgs"
I see packages other than "sgml-base:all" are still mentioned, but the rate at
which they appear decreases. After a few seconds the rate of other package
names appearing is (~5 Hz). After a minute or so, the average rate drops to
(~1 Hz).
Running the command with debug set to 440 (-D440), I see that these sgml-
base:all has a dependency on perl. I've captured the output for a few seconds
(some 780,000 lines) and will try to attach this to the bug as a compressed
file.
I noticed that both perl and perl-modules are not configured and that they have
a circular dependency. Because of this, both perl and perl-modules must be
configured at the same time:
zitpcx6184:~# dpkg --configure perl
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl:
perl depends on perl-modules (>= 5.20.1-2); however:
Package perl-modules is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing package perl (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
perl
zitpcx6184:~#
zitpcx6184:~# dpkg --configure perl-modules
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of perl-modules:
perl-modules depends on perl (>= 5.20.1-1); however:
Package perl is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing package perl-modules (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
perl-modules
zitpcx6184:~#
zitpcx6184:~# dpkg --configure perl-modules perl
Setting up perl-modules (5.20.1-2) ...
Setting up perl (5.20.1-2) ...
zitpcx6184:~#
After configuring perl and perl-modules, "dpkg --configure -a" worked as
expected.
My suspicion is that the circular dependency between perl and perl-modules
confused dpkg so it couldn't compute the dependency graph.
HTH,
Paul.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (990, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 3.16-2-686-pae (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Versions of packages dpkg depends on:
ii libbz2-1.0 1.0.6-7
ii libc6 2.19-11
ii liblzma5 5.1.1alpha+20120614-2
ii libselinux1 2.3-2
ii tar 1.27.1-2
ii zlib1g 1:1.2.8.dfsg-2
dpkg recommends no packages.
Versions of packages dpkg suggests:
ii apt 1.0.9.3
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