"apt-get install" throws "fopen: Permission denied" errors

[Magnus Hedemark]

Packages install ok but with a number of fopen errors.

magnus@octavius:~$ sudo apt-get install gimp
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  gimp-data libgimp2.0
Suggested packages:
  ghostscript gimp-data-extras gimp-help-en gimp-help libasound2 libgimp-perl
Recommended packages:
  gimp-gnomevfs gimp-libcurl gimp-python
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  gimp gimp-data libgimp2.0
0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 14.7MB of archives.
After this operation, 48.4MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
Get:1 http://apt.nexenta.org hardy-unstable/main gimp-data 2.4.6-1ubuntu1~nexenta1 [9749kB]
Get:2 http://apt.nexenta.org hardy-unstable/main libgimp2.0 2.4.6-1ubuntu1~nexenta1 [969kB]
Get:3 http://apt.nexenta.org hardy-unstable/main gimp 2.4.6-1ubuntu1~nexenta1 [3972kB]
Fetched 14.7MB in 48s (302kB/s)
Selecting previously deselected package gimp-data.
(Reading database ... 46343 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking gimp-data (from .../gimp-data_2.4.6-1ubuntu1~nexenta1_all.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package libgimp2.0.
Unpacking libgimp2.0 (from .../libgimp2.0_2.4.6-1ubuntu1~nexenta1_solaris-i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously deselected package gimp.
Unpacking gimp (from .../gimp_2.4.6-1ubuntu1~nexenta1_solaris-i386.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
fopen: Permission denied
Setting up gimp-data (2.4.6-1ubuntu1~nexenta1) ...

Setting up libgimp2.0 (2.4.6-1ubuntu1~nexenta1) ...

Setting up gimp (2.4.6-1ubuntu1~nexenta1) ...

magnus@octavius:~$ uname -a
SunOS octavius 5.11 NexentaOS_20081207 i86pc i386 i86pc Solaris
magnus@octavius:~$

[Magnus Hedemark (viridari)]

I have made progress figuring out the root cause (literally).

/var/cache/man needs to be recursively owned by user "man". Many of the locale subdirs were owned by user "root". If you down a "chown -R man /var/cache/man" this problem goes away.

Each of the successive fopen errors seems to be related to updating manpages for each of the locales (thanks to mib_chrol in ##nexenta for finding the open64 call that triggers this)

This is why running /usr/bin/mandb as root does not trigger errors, but dpkg related tools will (as these seem to update /var/cache/man in the context of the "man" user).

[outsider (siderelay)]

I just ran into this bug too, and there's not only /var/cache/man, but also /var and /var/cache need to be chmod'ed to 755