bug in dependency resolution while installing libguestfs-tools

[Arun Tomar]

adminuser@AtlasQA:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty

adminuser@AtlasQA:~$ uname -a
Linux AtlasQA 3.13.0-40-generic #69-Ubuntu SMP Thu Nov 13 17:53:56 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Steps to reproduce the problem.

1. aptitude-update.
2. Install zfs
root@AtlasQA:~# cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/zfs.list
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/zfs-native/stable/ubuntu trusty main

aptitude install ubuntu-zfs

3. Install kvm
 aptitude -y install qemu-kvm libvirt-bin virtinst bridge-utils

4. install libguestfs-tools.

root@AtlasQA:~# aptitude install libguestfs-tools
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  cryptsetup{a} cryptsetup-bin{a} ghostscript{a} gsfonts{a} icoutils{a} jfsutils{a} ldmtool{a} libauthen-sasl-perl{a} libconfig9{a} libcryptsetup4{a} libcupsfilters1{a} libcupsimage2{a}
  libencode-locale-perl{a} libfile-listing-perl{a} libfont-afm-perl{a} libgs9{a} libgs9-common{a} libguestfs-perl{a} libguestfs-tools libguestfs0{a} libhivex0{a} libhtml-form-perl{a} libhtml-format-perl{a}
  libhtml-parser-perl{a} libhtml-tagset-perl{a} libhtml-tree-perl{a} libhttp-cookies-perl{a} libhttp-daemon-perl{a} libhttp-date-perl{a} libhttp-message-perl{a} libhttp-negotiate-perl{a} libijs-0.35{a}
  libintl-perl{a} libio-html-perl{a} libio-socket-inet6-perl{a} libio-socket-ssl-perl{a} libjbig2dec0{a} libjson-glib-1.0-0{a} libjson-glib-1.0-common{a} libldm-1.0-0{a} liblwp-mediatypes-perl{a}
  liblwp-protocol-https-perl{a} libmailtools-perl{a} libnet-http-perl{a} libnet-smtp-ssl-perl{a} libnet-ssleay-perl{a} libnetpbm10{a} libpaper-utils{a} libpaper1{a} libsocket6-perl{a}
  libstring-shellquote-perl{a} libsys-virt-perl{a} liburi-perl{a} libwin-hivex-perl{a} libwww-perl{a} libwww-robotrules-perl{a} libxml-parser-perl{a} libxml-xpath-perl{a} netpbm{a} poppler-data{a} scrub{a}
  supermin{a} zerofree{a} zfs-fuse{a}
0 packages upgraded, 64 newly installed, 0 to remove and 110 not upgraded.
Need to get 19.7 MB of archives. After unpacking 72.0 MB will be used.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 zfsutils : Conflicts: zfs-fuse but 0.7.0-10.1 is to be installed.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

     Remove the following packages:
1) ubuntu-zfs
2) zfsutils

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] n
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

     Keep the following packages at their current version:
1) libguestfs-perl [Not Installed]
2) libguestfs-tools [Not Installed]
3) libguestfs0 [Not Installed]
4) zfs-fuse [Not Installed]

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] n

*** No more solutions available ***

The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

     Keep the following packages at their current version:
1) libguestfs-perl [Not Installed]
2) libguestfs-tools [Not Installed]
3) libguestfs0 [Not Installed]
4) zfs-fuse [Not Installed]

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] q
Abandoning all efforts to resolve these dependencies.
Abort.

[Axel Beckert (xtaran)]

This is neither an issue with aptitude nor a bug:

As the output says, "zfsutils : Conflicts: zfs-fuse", but libguestfs-tools depends on libguestfs0 which depends on zfs-fuse.

So zfsutils and libguestfs-tools can't be installed at the same time. Which is exactly what aptitude argued about.

Closing as invalid.

[Arun Tomar (tomar-arun)]

I didn't wanted to bring this up, but that is not the case in Centos. there i can install zfs and libvirtguestfs both without issues.

[Arun Tomar (tomar-arun)]

in the above comment there was a typo, and it's not letting me fix it. what i meant was i can install and use zfs and libguestfs-tools both on Centos.

[Richard Jones (rjones-redhat)]

Which version of libguestfs?

In Debian libguestfs, the zfs dependency has been split out into a separate package (libguestfs-zfs). So it's likely that Ubuntu needs to sync with the Debian package.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Jim Salter (jrssnet)]

> This is neither an issue with aptitude nor a bug

This is technically not an issue with aptitude, which is doing what it's supposed to, but this is ABSOLUTELY a bug.

zfsutils provides all the code that libguestfs0 is looking for, but the libguestfs0 package is not configured to accept anything but the installation of zfs-fuse, bar none, full stop. Which is a bug. You don't necessarily need any ZFS at all to be running libguestfs0, and you *absolutely* don't need zfs-fuse, which is essentially a dead project, even if you do want to run ZFS and libguestfs-tools.

[Jim Salter (jrssnet)]

This should be fixed by changing the dependencies in libguestfs0. For one, ZFS shouldn't be a hard dependency at all, it should be a recommend. For another, whether a depend or a recommend, it should be 'zfs-fuse | zfsutils', not merely 'zfs-fuse' as it is now.

[Richard Jones (rjones-redhat)]

This is basically a duplicate of https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1053911

[Jim Salter (jrssnet)]

In the meantime, workaround for those of us who aren't package maintainers is here:

http://jrs-s.net/2015/05/13/libguestfs0-and-zfs-on-linux-in-ubuntu/

TL;DR edit the deb, remove the ill-considered dependency, done (at least until the next update puts it right back again).