installing tests fails

[Paul Larson]

Binary package hint: phoronix-test-suite

Whenever I try to install a test with phoronix-test-suite in Lucid, it fails:

plars@beagle:~$ phoronix-test-suite install aio-stress
PHP Notice: Use of undefined constant IS_NVIDIA_LINUX - assumed 'IS_NVIDIA_LINUX' in /usr/share/phoronix-test-suite/pts-core/objects/phodevi/components/phodevi_system.php on line 1052

The following dependencies are needed and will be installed:

- libaio-dev

This process may take several minutes.
[sudo] password for plars:
sudo: aptitude -y --allow-untrusted install libaio-dev: command not found
      aio-stress:
            File Found: aio-stress.c [0.03MB]
            Installation Size: 0.5 MB
            Installing Test

The aio-stress installer exited with a non-zero exit status.
Installation Log: /home/plars/.phoronix-test-suite/installed-tests/aio-stress/install-failed.log
Installation failed.

-------------------
aptitude *is* installed, and if I manually run 'sudo aptitude -y --allow-untrusted install libaio-dev', it works just fine and I can go back and run the install step successfully. The log file mentioned above only contained the log of the failed build on aio-stress, which was unsurprising, but a bit surprising that it continued to attempt the build after failing to install the dependencies for it.

This error has occurred on each and every test from phoronix that I have tried to have it install so far.

[Paul Larson (pwlars)]

I've also tried this on the upstream 2.4 release, and the 2.6 alpha 3 release with the same result

[michaellarabel (michael-michaellarabel)]

Hi Paul,

Right now the Phoronix Test Suite will continue on installing a test even if a dependency fails to install since we cater to all distributions and other OSes, just not Ubuntu/Debian, so rather than having a wider support burden with having to play additional hooks for apt-get/aptitude/yum/others checks to see if an external dependency properly installs. After all, this is just a very small part of the Phoronix Test Suite and with most users having the necessary dependencies already installed.

So this error is occurring whenever you try to install anything with an external dependency? What version of Ubuntu are you running? I've used Phoronix Test Suite 2.4/2.6/Git on literally dozens of Ubuntu 9.10/10.04-snapshots installations (and older versions in the past too) without encountering a "sudo: aptitude -y --allow-untrusted install libaio-dev: command not found" (or similar package) error message. Is there anything unique to your Ubuntu setup beyond a stock installation?

Also, I assume once you manually install the respective dependency, the test installs fine?

-- Michael

[Paul Larson (pwlars)]

From /usr/share/phoronix-test-suite/pts-core/static/distro-scripts/install-ubuntu-packages.sh
if [ -x /usr/bin/aptitude ]; then
        # aptitude is nice since it doesn't fail if a non-existant package is hit
        # See: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=503215
        $ROOT "aptitude -y --allow-untrusted install $*"
else
        $ROOT "apt-get -y --ignore-missing install $*"
fi
=========
Removing the quotes (i.e. $ROOT aptitude -y --allow-untrusted install $*) seems to clear it up for me. I guessing this bug probably exists on x86 as well.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

In addition to the quoting problem, it should be considered a bug to prefer aptitude over apt-get, and a *grave* bug to be passing '--allow-untrusted -y'. A testsuite has no business overriding the security policy for packages.

[michaellarabel (michael-michaellarabel)]

Aptitude support was added on top of apt-get precisely due to the Debian bug #503215 that you mention where apt-get fails when a package is non-existent, which we have run into when using PTS on older versions of Ubuntu. The --allow-untrusted was also added for another bug, but I can remove that upstream as I believe it affected an unofficial Ubuntu derivative and not Ubuntu itself.

[michaellarabel (michael-michaellarabel)]

Paul,

Do you happen to be testing using KDE / kdesudo? In PTS Git I had removed the quote like you did in the past, but on a clean Ubuntu Lucid daily LiveCD install just 30 minutes ago, when using gksudo without the quotes it ends up giving a error (it appears that it's basically trying to pass the -y and install arguments to gksudo rather than aptitude/apt-get, which is causing an error and then not calling aptitude at all.

[Paul Larson (pwlars)]

No, I'm running from an ssh session, so I'm calling sudo.

[Paul Larson (pwlars)]

If I get a chance, I'll see if I can reproduce what you are seeing. I'm not sure why it might be doing that, but a possibility to consider if all else fails might be something like:
$ROOT bash -c "aptitude..."

[Emmet Hikory (persia)]

Based on some limited testing, removing the quotes breaks both gksudo and kdesudo for me. These can be fixed by appending "--" to the command line to tell gksudo or kdesudo to not consider the following elements as arguments. This change also works for the sudo case, where sudo knows that -y is not an argument it ought use.

This breaks down for ROOT="su -c" which can't seem to handle a call without quotes, even if escaped by "--". I'll upload a revision to this change that works in the more common cases (where one of gksudo, kdesudo, or sudo is available), as this makes it less bad then it is now, but it would benefit from someone rewriting the entire block to handle all cases more generally and safely (and even moreso from adding test cases to ensure that changes to this block really work).

[Alessio Treglia (quadrispro)]

Please take a look at the latest release available in Maverick.

Feedback is obviously welcome!

[Eero (eero+launchpad)]

It's 2015 and this is still broken...

[michaellarabel (michael-michaellarabel)]

Eero: what is broken? Are you using the recent PTS releases? As far as I know, there's no outstanding issues pertaining to this bug and I've been using all the Ubuntu releases on Cloud/Desktop/Server without issue. If you're still using an older Ubuntu release, I suggest downloading the latest PTS package at http://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/