Alien fails for lzma-compressed rpms

[stecklum]

Binary package hint: alien

When trying to convert a RPM which was compressed using the LZMA method alien fails, e.g.

~/System/src$ sudo alien -v jskycat-3.0-1.noarch.rpm
Unpacking of 'jskycat-3.0-1.noarch.rpm' failed at /usr/share/perl5/Alien/Package/Rpm.pm line 155.

This happens on Ubuntu 8.10 with both the original and newest rpm and alien packages (from Karmic). The reason is that cpio cannot handle LZMA-compressed output of rpm2cpio. Replacing the two instances instances of

 "rpm2cpio ".$this->filename." | in Rpm.pm

with

"rpm2cpio ".$this->filename." | lzma -d |

solves the problem. However, it leads to an error now for uncompressed RPMs. So it should be checked beforehand if a RPM is compressed using LZMA or not.

[pdf (pdffs)]

Attached patch for Rpm.pm from alien-8.78 detects LZMA packed CPIO archives, and allows them to be worked with, and retains ability to work with standard RPMs.

Please test...

[pdf (pdffs)]

Should probably add the '-q' flag to the lzma decompress too... attaching updated patch.

[Mathias Gug (mathiaz)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue you are reporting is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug to the developers of the software by following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/Debian. If you have done so, please tell us the number of the upstream bug (or the link), so we can add a bugwatch that will inform us about its status. Thanks in advance.

[Andrew Starr-Bochicchio (andrewsomething)]

Fixed in Maverick:

alien (8.81) unstable; urgency=low

   * Avoid uninitialized value warning when debian/rules fails to run
     due to alien being run in a noexec directory. Closes: #579216
   * Prevent DESTROY stomping on alien's exit code sometimes.
   * Support extracting lzma compressed RPMs.
     (Patch by unnamed person on some bug tracking system I don't frequent.)
   * Suggest lzma. If not installed, alien will still fail to decompress
     RPMs using it, but will support most rpms, which are not.
   * Fix precedence problem that prevented alien from preserving permissions
     of suid/sgid binaries that are not owned by root.
     (Patch by Duane Waddle, on a bug tracking system I don't frequent, that
     was about the "expire" it 4 days from now. We got lucky Duane, but please
     use the Debian BTS next time!)
   * Support RPMs containing ghost files.
     (Patch by Ben Webb, who would get his patches applied quicker if he
     actually communicated them to the program's author.)

 -- Joey Hess <email address hidden> Mon, 17 May 2010 20:56:59 -0400