Ubuntu Software Centre halts when trying to display certain items in the Installed tab

[Paddy Landau]

As instructed, this is a split from bug 972310.

Related bugs:
Bug 973217: Show or hide technical items remains when nothing is there in Ubuntu Software Centre
Bug 973218: Ubuntu Software Centre does not display certain items in the All Software tab
Bug 973219: Ubuntu Software Centre does not display certain items in the Installed tab

Consider an item available from non-Canonical repositories, e.g. Oracle's Virtual Box Guest Additions (direct from the Oracle website).

This example uses Oracle's Virtual Box Guest Additions when running from Virtual Box. (Actually, you can replicate this in a system that is not running in a Virtual Box, by omitting steps 1 & 2.)

1. Run Ubuntu in a Virtual Box (the latest one available from virtualbox.org).

2. Install the Extension Pack (i.e. Guest Additions).

3. Open Ubuntu Software Centre and go to the "Installed" tab.

4. Enter "virtualbox guest" into the search bar. Nothing shows.

5. Select the down-arrow and choose any item, e.g. "Canonical Partners", "Unknown".

6. The "thinking" circle (sorry, I don't know its name) in the window turns around and around, and nothing else happens even when leaving for several minutes. It should display either nothing or the installed package. You can, however, choose a different option in Ubuntu Software Centre, so it has not actually hung.

[Gary Lasker (gary-lasker)]

Hi Paddy, thanks again for writing this bug. If you don't mind, could you please try running software-center from inside your Virtualbox VM, but launching it from the command line as shown:

  $ software-center

Then, please reproduce the error and paste any output that you see in the terminal window into this bug. This should give us the info we need to figure out the cause of the issue that you are seeing.

Thank you again for your help!

[Paddy Landau (paddy-landau)]

I ran this on both my VM and my non-VM test installations (omitting steps 1 and 2 for the latter), and their results were identical.

The first three lines were displayed immediately, and the second three lines after a pause:

2012-04-04 19:34:09,263 - softwarecenter.ui.gtk3.app - INFO - setting up proxy 'None'
2012-04-04 19:34:09,356 - softwarecenter.db.database - INFO - open() database: path=None use_axi=True use_agent=True
2012-04-04 19:34:10,467 - softwarecenter.backend.reviews - WARNING - Could not get usefulness from server, no username in config file
2012-04-04 19:34:44,566 - softwarecenter.ui.gtk3.app - INFO - software-center-agent finished with status 0
2012-04-04 19:34:44,566 - softwarecenter.db.database - INFO - reopen() database
2012-04-04 19:34:44,566 - softwarecenter.db.database - INFO - open() database: path=None use_axi=True use_agent=True

Nothing else was displayed. I rebooted several times to test, but always the same.

[Gary Lasker (gary-lasker)]

Hi Paddy. Ok, hmm, that output is all fine with no bug indicated there. Ok, we will have to investigate this further.

Thanks again!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for software-center (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]