munin-node: apt_all does not Grok Ubuntu (possible regression)

[Martin Jackson]

/usr/share/munin/plugins/apt_all is hard-coded to look for releases "stable", "testing", "unstable" which Ubuntu doesn't use. A very similar problem was reported before in bug 245031; is it possible that the patch that fixed that bug was dropped somehow?

[Martin Jackson (mhjacks)]

I have checked the source for the versions in both 12.04 and Quantal and I see the same behavior. I'm decent at Perl; I hope to be able to submit a patch tonight.

[Daniel Hahler (blueyed)]

The relevant patch appears to be: http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/karmic/munin/karmic/revision/15/debian/patches/221-apt-ubuntu-changes.patch

I think that this should be generalized to work also with Debian by default (and then incorporated there) or it needs to get added to the merge of 2.0.5 for munin (which has to be done still AFAICS).

[Martin Jackson (mhjacks)]

Here is a patch to discover the distributor and codename. It will work for Debian and Ubuntu; it is my hope that this would be accepted upstream.

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[Daniel Hahler (blueyed)]

Thanks for your patch!

You might want to handle the case where lsb_release is not installed/executable and then fallback to the Debian default instead of exiting.
(I do not know if the dependency of lsb_release is fulfilled when installing munin-node)

Apart from that the patch looks decent and you might want to submit it upstream (to Debian) directly: http://bugs.debian.org/munin-node - it would be fine to get it committed to Ubuntu first and then forward it to Debian though (e.g. via submittodebian).

[Martin Jackson (mhjacks)]

On 08/18/2012 04:34 PM, Daniel Hahler wrote:
> Thanks for your patch!
>
> You might want to handle the case where lsb_release is not installed/executable and then fallback to the Debian default instead of exiting.
> (I do not know if the dependency of lsb_release is fulfilled when installing munin-node)
>
> Apart from that the patch looks decent and you might want to submit it
> upstream (to Debian) directly: http://bugs.debian.org/munin-node - it
> would be fine to get it committed to Ubuntu first and then forward it to
> Debian though (e.g. via submittodebian).
>
Thanks, Daniel.

I'm reworking the patch a bit as with further testing, there are places
where update_state is called without having run the new
determine_releases sub. I will also include your suggestion. I will
submit a new version this weekend.

Thanks,

Marty

[Martin Jackson (mhjacks)]

Updated patch:

1) Include call to determine_releases() inside update_state() sub, as several code paths need it
2) Default to Debian-specific behaviors if lsb_release is not Ubuntu (at Daniel's suggestion)

[Martin Jackson (mhjacks)]

Standby. In leaving this running overnight, it throws errors (or at least warnings) if all categories are not actually enabled - as it turns out, I haven't enabled "-proposed" on my firewalls. I need to rethink the release determination mechanism slightly to account for this. One more iteration of the patch, I think, will be needed - I should get the fix in today, and I will let it run overnight to make sure there are no unpleasant surprises.

[Martin Jackson (mhjacks)]

Update patch:

1) Query potential releases with -t $release prior to updating status

[Martin Jackson (mhjacks)]

I have installed this on my test systems (mixture of Debian and Ubuntu), and will post after this has run a few hours. There should be no unexpected cron spam. If there isn't, I would request that the patch be reviewed again and considered for inclusion in Ubuntu.

Clearly the fix part of this needs to get into Ubuntu; I would kind of like for this to go upstream as well, definitely to Debian and if possible to the main munin project. When (if?) the patch is adopted in Ubuntu I will submit it to munin. I know there are other apt-based distributions; what upstream wants may be different.

[Martin Jackson (mhjacks)]

OK, it has run overnight, and the update behavior is precisely what I would expect (no cron spam). However, it is not drawing the graphs for the number of pending packages (claiming it is missing a label). I need to investigate this behavior a bit further.

[Martin Jackson (mhjacks)]

OK, I have modified all the places that use the release name, and the graph is being drawn, but the graphs look...strange. Not all of the categories show up and those that do all report zero packages pending. When telnet'ing to 4949 fetch apt_all reports the right info, so someone with more munin-fu than I have should probably look at this.

I should mention that on my Debian system the graphing works as expected.

[Thomas A. F. Thorne (tafthorne)]

I had a look in the Debian bug system for a matching bug but could not find one.
The closest thing I could find was Bug#314610: munin-node: wrong regexp in apt_all
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/group$3Alinux.debian.bugs.dist$20munin$20apt_all/linux.debian.bugs.dist/Ik8xTKQnOAw/h2EUbNEh0I0J
However that addresses a different issue in a similar area of code. Not the same bug.

In the Munin project the closest thing I can identify is #927 Ability to use custom APT releases in apt_all.in plugin
http://munin-monitoring.org/ticket/927
If that ticket was completed then a `custom_releases` environment variable would exist that could be used to set the relevant names.

I note that this has sat for 3 years without any further activity. Is there something I could do to help move it along? My Perl is not fantastic but it might be good enough to help out in some way.

[Lars Kruse (devel-sumpfralle)]

Just for your information:
* There is a merge request for solving this issue (i.e. determining the set of suitable release names) without `lsb_release`: https://github.com/munin-monitoring/munin/pull/1128.
* The related Debian issue is d#715141 (https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=715141).

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Ubuntu 19.04 has entered Feature Freeze already.
Given the (embarrassing) age of the bug and it's rather low priority I think it will not drive a Feature Freeze exception. But we can easily fix this in early 19.10 by syncing the most recent package as the only Ubuntu Delta we have for bug 1770569 is also in Debian in the meantime.
Therefore making this a sync will resolve the issue.

I've taken a note to do so once 19.10 opens up - and since it seems so close at least discuss with others if this shouldn't be synced now even for 19.04 (FF being the only blocker as mentioned).

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

FYI: I filed bug 1818208 to check if we would be allowed to still sync it now or if we have to wait for 19.10

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

The latest version got merged in Disco - this is fixed in https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/munin/2.0.47-1ubuntu3

[Thomas A. F. Thorne (tafthorne)]

Thank you for taking the time to get this through Christian.