[issue162] smart crashes after downloading corrupt apt-rpm repository

[jdf42 at Labix Tracker]

New submission from jdf42 <james.faulkner at yale.edu>:

Recently I upgraded our repository server for smart.  The repositories are in
apt-rpm format.

I installed apt-0.5.15lorg3 for the genbasedir command, and set up a nightly
cronjob to regenerate the apt-rpm repositories.  Unfortunately, I made a mistake
while doing so.  I ran /usr/local/bin/genbasedir from the cronjob, however
/usr/local/bin was not in the PATH, so genbasedir couldn't find genpkglist,
which caused the apt-rpm repositories to become corrupt.  Here's some sample
output from the genbasedir cronjob:
Components: updates
Processing pkglists... updates/usr/local/bin/genbasedir: line 241:
genpkglist: command not found
cat: /tmp/genbasedir.o25504/srcidx.updates: No such file or directory
 [done]
Processing srclists... [done]
Updating component releases... updates [done]
Updating global release file... [done]
Appending MD5Sum... updates [done]
All your base are belong to us!!!

After downloading the corrupt repository using "apt-get update", apt will simply
give a warning saying "W: Release file did not contain checksum information
for...".  With apt, after fixing the repository you can just run "apt-get
update" again on the client and everything will be fixed.

However, smart crashes.  After running "smart update" once on this corrupt
repository, smart will immediately crash when you try to carry out any
operation.  Even just trying to run "smart update" again crashes smart, so even
if the repository is fixed, you can't update smart.  I've had to tell all of my
clients to run "rm -rf /var/lib/smart/channels/*" in order to fix their smart
installations.

So smart should probably be robust enough that it can update its repository
database even if its existing database is corrupt.  It'll save a lot of people a
lot of running "rm -rf /var/lib/smart/channels/*".

----------
messages: 508
nosy: jdf42
priority: bug
project: smart
status: unread
title: smart crashes after downloading corrupt apt-rpm repository

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Labix issue tracker <tracker at labix.org>
<http://tracker.labix.org/issue162>
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