hardy - weird empty new lines in output - aptitude overpasses installation prompt

[Savvas Radevic]

Binary package hint: aptitude

Hardy heron 8.04 (alpha until beta) updated

Sometimes when I do aptitude safe-upgrade or install it shows some weird breaks / empty new lines.
These empty new lines happen during the process and sometimes there are several of them after the command has ended.
These spaces cause problems with the installation prompt, i.e. it doesn't ask me if I want to install it or not and it proceeds.

It seems to happen randomly, I used these commands in gnome-terminal:
1) sudo aptitude update; sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
2) apt-cache depends linux-lib
3) apt-cache depends linux-libc-dev
4) sudo aptitude purge linux-libc-dev (weird empty new lines while processing, continued without installation prompt)
5) sudo aptitude install linux-generic linux-headers-generic ubuntu-desktop (weird empty new lines while processing)
6) sudo aptitude install ubuntu-desktop (weird empty new lines while processing and at the end)

See the text attachment for the output.

Notice the output when I tried to purge linux-libc-dev (4):
"Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] The following packages are unused and will be REMOVED:"

$ apt-cache policy aptitude
aptitude:
  Installed: 0.4.9-2ubuntu4
  Candidate: 0.4.9-2ubuntu4
  Version table:
 *** 0.4.9-2ubuntu4 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

This could probably be a security vulnerability, because it doesn't ask the user if they really want to do this.

[Savvas Radevic (medigeek)]

another example attached, happened when i wanted to remove the php5 mod of apache2

[Savvas Radevic (medigeek)]

Oh, it still happens with the new aptitude:

$ apt-cache policy aptitude
aptitude:
  Installed: 0.4.9-2ubuntu5
  Candidate: 0.4.9-2ubuntu5
  Version table:
 *** 0.4.9-2ubuntu5 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Christer Edwards (christer.edwards)]

This just happened to me again on a fresh install of Ubuntu RC. Output example pasted below:

christer@station1:~$ sudo aptitude install htop
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information... 0%

Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... 0%

Initializing package states... Done

Building tag database... 0%

Building tag database... 43%

Building tag database... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  htop
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 46.4kB of archives. After unpacking 180kB will be used.
Writing extended state information... Done
Get:1 http://10.2.3.16 hardy/universe htop 0.6.6+svn20070915-1 [46.4kB]
Fetched 46.4kB in 0s (76.6kB/s)
Selecting previously deselected package htop.
(Reading database ... 99087 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking htop (from .../htop_0.6.6+svn20070915-1_i386.deb) ...
Setting up htop (0.6.6+svn20070915-1) ...

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Writing extended state information... Done
Building tag database... Done

[Mike Basinger (mike.basinger)]

Same thing happen with apt-get also.
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/196163

[Savvas Radevic (medigeek)]

Hm.. it could be related to gnome-terminal (?)

$ aptitude --version
aptitude 0.4.9 compiled at Apr 4 2008 09:45:25
Compiler: g++ 4.2.3 (Ubuntu 4.2.3-2ubuntu7)

NCurses version: 5.6
libsigc++ version: 2.0.17

It happened again:
user@ubuntu:~$ sudo aptitude purge kvm
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done

Building tag database... 0%

Building tag database... Done
The following packages are unused and will be REMOVED:
  bochsbios daemon debootstrap libvdeplug2 qemu vde2 vgabios
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  kvm{p}
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 8 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 35.9MB will be freed.
Writing extended state information... Done
(Reading database ... 156359 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing qemu ...
Removing bochsbios ...
Removing daemon ...
Removing debootstrap ...
(Reading database ... 156202 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing kvm ...
 * Succesfully unloaded kvm module kvm_intel
Purging configuration files for kvm ...
(Reading database ... 156139 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing vde2 ...
Removing libvdeplug2 ...
Removing vgabios ...
Processing triggers for libc6 ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Writing extended state information... Done
Building tag database... Done

$ sudo aptitude update
Hit http://www.virtualbox.org gutsy Release.gpg
Ign http://www.virtualbox.org gutsy/non-free Translation-en_US
Hit http://packages.medibuntu.org hardy Release.gpg
Ign http://packages.medibuntu.org hardy/free Translation-en_US
Hit http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy Release.gpg
Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy/main Translation-en_US
Hit http://www.virtualbox.org gutsy Release
Ign http://packages.medibuntu.org hardy/non-free Translation-en_US
Hit http://packages.medibuntu.org hardy Release
Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy/restricted Translation-en_US
Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy/universe Translation-en_US
Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy/multiverse Translation-en_US
Hit http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy-updates Release.gpg
Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy-updates/main Translation-en_US
Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy-updates/restricted Translation-en_US
Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy-updates/universe Translation-en_US
Hit http://www.virtualbox.org gutsy/non-free Packages
Ign http://packages.medibuntu.org hardy/free Packages
Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy-updates/multiverse Translation-en_US
Hit http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy-security Release.gpg
Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy-security/main Translation-en_US
Ign http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy-security/restricted Translation-en_US
Ign http://archive.ub...

[James Westby (james-w)]

Hi,

This bug has already been reported, unfortunately I can't find
it right now.

I believe that it is a problem in the kernel.

Thanks,

James