xlibs-data: error during upgrade

[Debian Bug Importer]

Automatically imported from Debian bug report #289327 http://bugs.debian.org/289327

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Automatically imported from Debian bug report #289327 http://bugs.debian.org/289327

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-Id: <email address hidden>
Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2005 16:14:09 +0100
From: Norbert <email address hidden>
To: Debian Bug Tracking System <email address hidden>
Subject: xlibs-data: error during upgrade

Package: xlibs-data
Version: 4.3.0.dfsg.1-10
Severity: critical
Justification: breaks unrelated software

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.10-mobiark
Locale: LANG=de_DE, LC_CTYPE=de_DE (charmap=ISO-8859-1)

-- no debconf information

during an upgrade there comes the following error:
update-alternatives: internal error: /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/x-cursor-theme corrupt: missing newline after manflag

There are many other packages which depends on the correct installation of xlibs-data. As a result of that the GNOME desktop
does not work anymore.

Now I attach a list of the packages which could not install correctly:
xlibs-data
libx11-6
xlibs
libmagick6
libmagick++6
gnome-session
xterm
gnome-terminal
xbase-clients
gdm
gnome-themes-extras
gnome-panel
gnome-applets
gnome-applets-data
imagemagick
libsdl1.2debian-oss
libsdl1.2debian
libx11-dev
libxi-dev
libxt-dev
x-window-system-core
gnome-panel-data
libxv-dev
xlibs-static-dev

Norbert

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

Seems likely to be specific to Debian, but please confirm

[Daniel Stone (daniels)]

I suspect transient filesystem corruption, and if it isn't, then it's
update-alternatives' fault.

[Branden Robinson (branden)]

severity 289327 normal
retitle 289327 internal error: /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/x-cursor-theme corrupt: missing newline after manflag
ressign 289327 gtk2-engines-industrial
merge 288753 289327
thanks

Sir,

Filing multiple reports about a problem against different packages and with
varying severities is neither the proper way to communicate with a
volunteer-driver project, nor does it appreciably increase the likelihood
that your problem will be resolved in a timely fashion.

You filed #288753 on 5 January against gtk2-engines-industrial with normal
severity, reporting the following problem:

  internal error: /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/x-cursor-theme corrupt: missing
  newline after manflag

You then filed #289327 on 8 January against xlibs-data, reporting the exact
same problem. This time with *CRITICAL* severity.

On 9 January, Josselin Mouette attempted to contact you regarding #288753,
but you have not yet replied.

If you do not plan to respond to this query for further information, then
that, too, is not a good way to interact with volunteer developers.

The critical severity implies that (if necessary) the entire Debian Project
should stop what it is doing and direct its resources to fixing the
reported problem at once, bending its will upon a single task. It reflects
the most drastic of problems. While I understand your desire to see an
annoying problem resolved as soon as possible, imagine what would happen if
all of our users behaved in this way. If all bugs are critical, then none
are critical. We have no way to distinguish the truly alarming problems
from the passing fancy that a user would like us to implement at our
leisure.

At least one of your reports must be in error. They report the same basic
information, and yet somehow drastically different conclusions are reached
as to the nature of the problem.

In, the future, please do not file duplicate bug reports. It causes people
to spend time identifying and merging those duplicates, and attempting to
write patient mails to the submittes, that could be spent researching the
problems reported and working towards a solution.

Thanks for your time. Please direct further correspondence regarding the
problem you have encountered to <email address hidden>.

--
G. Branden Robinson |
Debian GNU/Linux | kernel panic -- causal failure
<email address hidden> | universe will now reboot
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |

[Debian Bug Importer (debzilla)]

Message-ID: <email address hidden>
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2005 22:27:02 -0500
From: Branden Robinson <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>, <email address hidden>
Cc: <email address hidden>
Subject: merging duplicate bug

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severity 289327 normal
retitle 289327 internal error: /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/x-cursor-theme co=
rrupt: missing newline after manflag
ressign 289327 gtk2-engines-industrial
merge 288753 289327
thanks

Sir,

Filing multiple reports about a problem against different packages and with
varying severities is neither the proper way to communicate with a
volunteer-driver project, nor does it appreciably increase the likelihood
that your problem will be resolved in a timely fashion.

You filed #288753 on 5 January against gtk2-engines-industrial with normal
severity, reporting the following problem:

  internal error: /var/lib/dpkg/alternatives/x-cursor-theme corrupt: missing
  newline after manflag

You then filed #289327 on 8 January against xlibs-data, reporting the exact
same problem. This time with *CRITICAL* severity.

On 9 January, Josselin Mouette attempted to contact you regarding #288753,
but you have not yet replied.

If you do not plan to respond to this query for further information, then
that, too, is not a good way to interact with volunteer developers.

The critical severity implies that (if necessary) the entire Debian Project
should stop what it is doing and direct its resources to fixing the
reported problem at once, bending its will upon a single task. It reflects
the most drastic of problems. While I understand your desire to see an
annoying problem resolved as soon as possible, imagine what would happen if
all of our users behaved in this way. If all bugs are critical, then none
are critical. We have no way to distinguish the truly alarming problems
=66rom the passing fancy that a user would like us to implement at our
leisure.

At least one of your reports must be in error. They report the same basic
information, and yet somehow drastically different conclusions are reached
as to the nature of the problem.

In, the future, please do not file duplicate bug reports. It causes people
to spend time identifying and merging those duplicates, and attempting to
write patient mails to the submittes, that could be spent researching the
problems reported and working towards a solution.

Thanks for your time. Please direct further correspondence regarding the
problem you have encountered to <email address hidden>.

--=20
G. Branden Robinson |
Debian GNU/Linux | kernel panic -- causal failure
<email address hidden> | universe will now reboot
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ |

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[Kevin B. McCarty (kmccarty)]

package xlibs-data
reassign 119524 libx11-data
reassign 289327 xcursor-themes
reassign 295356 libx11-data
reassign 300160 libx11-data
reassign 326981 xcursor-themes

# Good heavens, xlibs is still around? How will we ever get rid of it?
reassign 345645 xlibs

reassign 280579 xkb-data
reassign 39040 libx11-data
reassign 212347 libx11-data
reassign 236252 libx11-data
thanks

--
Kevin B. McCarty <email address hidden> Physics Department
WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/ Princeton University
GPG: public key ID 4F83C751 Princeton, NJ 08544

[Justin Pryzby (justinpryzby-users)]

I agree with Joss's conclusion in the twin bug report; this looks like
some incarnation of corruption. Additionally, it looks like this bug
was intended to be merged with the one which is closed, but Brandon
typed "ressign" not "reassign", so the merge command failed too.

This bug is hereby resigned and laid to rest.