dpkg: warning: failed to open configuration file '/etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/multiarch' for reading: Permission denied

[Matt Zimmerman]

After upgrading from Natty to Oneiric, I'm getting this warning every time dpkg is invoked as a non-root user, because:

-rw-r----- 1 root root 26 2011-09-01 18:28 /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/multiarch

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: dpkg 1.16.0.3ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-9.15-generic 3.0.3
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-9-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Sep 2 12:52:28 2011
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release amd64 (20110427.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LC_COLLATE=C
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/zsh
SourcePackage: dpkg
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-09-02 (0 days ago)

[Raphaël Hertzog (hertzog)]

On Fri, 02 Sep 2011, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> After upgrading from Natty to Oneiric, I'm getting this warning every
> time dpkg is invoked as a non-root user, because:
>
> -rw-r----- 1 root root 26 2011-09-01 18:28 /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/multiarch

I have no recent oneiric system available to verify but AFAIK this file
is not installed by dpkg. So this report should be reassigned somewhere
else.

What gives "dpkg -S /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/multiarch" ?

It's also possible that the file is not packaged (packages.ubuntu.com
doesn't seem to know about it) and created by one of the upgrade script
and the weird rights would be a consequence of stricter umask
on your system ?

Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog ◈ Debian Developer

Follow my Debian News ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.com (English)
                      ▶ http://RaphaelHertzog.fr (Français)

[Raphaël Hertzog (hertzog)]

This seems to be fixed with the latest package at least.

$ dpkg -c /home/rhertzog/tmp/dpkg_1.16.0.3ubuntu5_amd64.deb |grep multiarch
-rw-r--r-- root/root 26 2011-10-06 10:04 ./etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/multiarch

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

Yes, I assume it was related to my stricter-than-default umask. I'm sure that dpkg itself does the right thing for conffiles, though, so it's safe to say this is resolved.