can not read /etc/udev/rules.d/z80_user.rules message

[David Clayton]

Binary package hint: udev

This message appeares in the log files at boot up of a Ubuntu 10.04 system.

The file in question is a link to the empty file /etc/udev/user.rules, editing this file and adding a single comment "#" seems to remove this message.

The script testing/loading this file should test for an empty file and then ignore it, or whatever package creates this file should give it some content so this subsequent test does not fail.

Many people have posted about this message worried that there is a problem with their systems, even though this does not affect the operations of a system anything that causes erroneous warnings only helps to confuse and discredit any potential real messages.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: udev 151-12
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-22.33-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-22-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
Architecture: amd64
CustomUdevRuleFiles: z80_user.rules
Date: Sat May 15 14:50:27 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 "Lucid Lynx" - Alpha amd64 (20100308)
MachineType: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. GA-MA78GM-S2HP
ProcCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-22-generic root=UUID=adaf9c80-1d4e-40d8-a7f6-171f6523c8e1 ro vga=771 splash
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_AU.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: udev
dmi.bios.date: 06/23/2009
dmi.bios.vendor: Award Software International, Inc.
dmi.bios.version: F5
dmi.board.name: GA-MA78GM-S2HP
dmi.board.vendor: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
dmi.board.version: x.x
dmi.chassis.type: 3
dmi.chassis.vendor: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnAwardSoftwareInternational,Inc.:bvrF5:bd06/23/2009:svnGigabyteTechnologyCo.,Ltd.:pnGA-MA78GM-S2HP:pvr:rvnGigabyteTechnologyCo.,Ltd.:rnGA-MA78GM-S2HP:rvrx.x:cvnGigabyteTechnologyCo.,Ltd.:ct3:cvr:
dmi.product.name: GA-MA78GM-S2HP
dmi.sys.vendor: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.

[GerhardGaußling (ggrubbish-web)]

Thank you. This workaround helps:
echo "#https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/udev/+bug/580811"|sudo tee -a /etc/udev/rules.d/z80_user.rules

I guess it's a bug against update-manager-core in hardy or whatever else, because it's a left-over from an earlier installation that should be handled by the upgrade process...

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Can you please give me the output of

  dpkg -S /etc/udev/user.rules

? I can't find where this was created or shipped. Thanks!

[David Clayton (dcstar)]

root@dc-master:/home/dc# dpkg -S /etc/udev/user.rules
dpkg: /etc/udev/user.rules not found.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Hm, I was afraid of that. I have no idea where user.rules might have come from. What was the first Ubuntu version that you installed, and to which ones did you upgrade? It should help narrowing down the affected versions.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Is user.rules completely empty? I. e. ls -l shows "0" byte?

[David Clayton (dcstar)]

As the first post stated, the (original o byte) empty file causes an error, a file with a manually added comment stops the message.

This was a fresh 10.04 Alpha install since upgraded.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

David Clayton [2010-08-27 6:17 -0000]:
> This was a fresh 10.04 Alpha install since upgraded.

Did you keep/restore your /etc settings from previous releases, or
used some third-party package repositories? Ubuntu has dropped the
z80_*.rules symlinks many years ago.

[David Clayton (dcstar)]

No full restore - but I did copy my /etc/fstab file over from my 9.04 system. I always do fresh install of new releases to specifically avoid issues with leftover cruft from previous versions.

I do have some PPAs for various packages (like BURG) but I cannot recall specifically what all the other repositories I had at the time I noticed this problem. I did have an ATI hardware driver PPA repository before Ubuntu made the official hardware drivers available for 10.04 - that was removed once the official ones became available.

As I was an Alpha user, it is not beyond the possibility that an early package did use this old stuff during the part of the development cycle that I jumped in on. I did have the issue (initially) with the redundant usbfs entry in /etc/fstab (which was required for VMware Server) which hangs 10.04, but I don't know if that is a factor.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

I don't think we ever touched this file in 10.04, it seems to come from some third party app. One thing you can try is

  grep user.rules /var/lib/dpkg/info/*

does that give any result?

[David Clayton (dcstar)]

Ohhh, maybe the pysdm package is the culprit?

root@dc-master:/home/dc# grep user.rules /var/lib/dpkg/info/*
/var/lib/dpkg/info/pysdm.postinst: [ -e /etc/udev/user.rules ] || touch /etc/udev/user.rules
/var/lib/dpkg/info/pysdm.postinst: [ -e /etc/udev/rules.d/z80_user.rules ] || ln -s ../user.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/z80_user.rules
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ufw.config: if [ ! -e "$USER_PATH/user.rules" ]; then
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ufw.config: orig=`md5sum $TEMPLATE_PATH/user.rules | cut -d ' ' -f 1`
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ufw.config: orig_md5file="$TEMPLATE_PATH/user.rules.md5sum"
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ufw.config: user=`md5sum $USER_PATH/user.rules | cut -d ' ' -f 1`
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ufw.config: for f in user.rules user6.rules
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ufw.list:/usr/share/ufw/iptables/user.rules
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ufw.list:/usr/share/ufw/user.rules
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ufw.list:/usr/share/ufw/user.rules.md5sum
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ufw.md5sums:a3fbaef910466dcc137f9037106c78f7 usr/share/ufw/iptables/user.rules
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ufw.md5sums:a3fbaef910466dcc137f9037106c78f7 usr/share/ufw/user.rules
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ufw.md5sums:a3321ad018d76056e8024d44f343edbc usr/share/ufw/user.rules.md5sum
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ufw.postinst: for f in user.rules user6.rules
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ufw.postinst: for f in user.rules user6.rules
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ufw.postrm: rm -f $USER_PATH/user.rules $USER_PATH/user6.rules

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Ah, that's it indeed! Thanks

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

This package indeed needs some urgent maintainer love, it's using totally deprecated udev rules setup.

[Pierre-Henri Berard (pierreberard)]

I had this message under maverick. It wasn't a new install but upgraded from lucid (and may be Karmic befor...).

The empty file /etc/udev/user.rules didn't exist. I creat it (without "#") and it's worked fine.

[YannUbuntu (yannubuntu)]

Setting as "Won't fix" because Pydsm will be removed from Quantal repositories (cf Bug #1005279 ).