ships /var/crash when it doesn't need to, breaks apport for non-root processes on karmic installs

[James Westby]

Binary package hint: update-notifier

update-notifier-common has started in karmic to ship /var/crash.

This doesn't have the special permissions that are expected for that dir,
and so when a non-root process attempts to write to the dir it fails.

It doesn't need to ship the dir at all as the apport upstart job creates
it. (Though checking the code handles its absence might be wise)

I am assuming that as dpkg unpacks the dir it will not change the
permissions on disk, so users who upgraded will not see the issue.

It is probably straightforward to stop shipping the dir, but that will
leave karmic installs broken, so we probably want some extra
handling to fix existing installations.

Thanks,

James

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Oct 12 19:04:38 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: update-notifier-common 0.89
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/zsh
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-12.41-generic
SourcePackage: update-notifier
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-12-generic i686

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package update-notifier - 0.90

---------------
update-notifier (0.90) karmic; urgency=low

  * data/update-notifier.schemas.in:
    - fix typo (LP: #400214)
  * debian/update-notifier-common.dirs:
    - do not ship /var/crash here (LP: #449738)
  * debian/rules:
    - create /var/crash with the right permissions
  * debian/update-notifier-common.postinst:
    - fixup if permissions of /var/crash are incorrect due to
      update-notifier-common (LP: #449738)
  * data/apt-cdrom-check:
    - only offer addon-cd if gnome-app-install is installed
      (software-center does not yet support addon CDs)
  * src/update.c:
    - use gtk-dialog-warning-panel by default and use gtk
      fallback mechanism to use the gtk-dialog-warning stock icon

 -- Michael Vogt <email address hidden> Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:15:35 +0200

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Reopening, it's still an issue in karmic final:

$ dpkg -c /var/cache/apt/archives/update-notifier-common_0.90_all.deb |grep var/crash
drwxrwxrwt root/root 0 2009-10-15 11:29 ./var/crash/

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Nevermind. u-n still ships /var/crash/, but with correct permissions now.