adept-updater reports many pkgs DEFECT

[Torsten Eichstädt]

Binary package hint: adept-updater

WORKAROUND: Don't let the upgrade run in such a case; wait and try again later.

Today, adept-updater presented me a long list of DEFECT packages several times.
The action suggested was to remove them. The list included many essential packages, so I closed the updater each time. Imagine what for instance my mother would have done...
Contrary to the list of broken pkgs, the status bar stated 3 pkgs upgradable (I'm sure with this), 0 to download (I guess, can't reproduce, see below), and - (minus) about one GB after the upgrade.
Magic, magic, on the next start of the updater, it showed only 4 pkgs upgradable, and the upgrade succeeded.

[Torsten Eichstädt (torsten-eichstaedt)]

1.: It is imperative to either
    - set root's locale to 'C' and to change 'sudo' to implicitely include root's login profile when a user switches to the root role, even when not called as 'sudo -'. Don't forget to update the docs ;).
    - or switch to the 'C' locale inside various system tools, and switch back to the original locale when printing messages.
The former is a workaround, but much less work than the latter. Bugs in l18n will be found slower, but IMHO system maintenance is more important.
Rationale: Either
    - The localization of basic libraries is not yet finished; they are still containing too many bugs, probably
      "between the lines", i.e. hard to find.
    - Or many basic system routines implicitely rely on 7-bit ASCII string ordering (again, "between the lines").
See the examples below.

2.: Could you please start a project that runs tests at least on the basic (minimal) system. Rationale: Ubuntu (and derivatives) contains way too many bugs, many of them are slips of the pen. They should not make it to the users system. Currently, it's either a nightmare or simply a matter of patience to get out of a broken pkg state. For the average user who doesn't know about the internals of the pkg system this is not acceptable.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[...] indicates some lines left out for clarification
Example 1:
# export LC_ALL=C
# apt-get check
[...]
  aqsis-libsc2a: Depends: libtiff4 but it is not installed
[...]
# export LC_ALL=de_DE.UTF-8
# apt-get check
[...]
  dirmngr: Hängt ab: libpth20 (>= 2.0.7-2) ist aber nicht installiert
[...]
# apt-get check|grep aqsis
[none; -->different pkg listing w/ unmet depencies in different locales; this is utterly wrong]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Example 2:
[This is from a previous run; after that I ran adept-updater and fetched a new pkg list, that's why the first pkg]
[shown differs from the example above]
# apt-get -s check
[...]
  acpi: Hängt ab: libc6 (>= 2.6-1) ist aber nicht installierbar
[translated: "acpi: depends: libc6 (>= 2.6-1) but can not be installed"]
[... many more pkgs complaining about libc6]
# dpkg -s libc6
Package: libc6
Status: install ok installed
[...]
Version: 2.6.1-1ubuntu10
[...]

CONCLUSION: The pkg maintainers either
    - did not agree on the correct naming convention for pkg versions (2.6-1 vs. 2.6.1) or
    - (more likely, because later I did not get complains on libc6; I have unattended security updates turned on)
    - version comparison is (was?) broken

[Torsten Eichstädt (torsten-eichstaedt)]

Launchpad ate my comment I was typing. When it's allowed to click on "Also affects + .." while I'm editing a new comment, it's a severe bug (in launchpad) to send the comment to a blackhole and not giving it back to me.

Back on topic, again: I reproducibly tracked this down and now can say for sure the bug is either in APT or in libc6/strcmp() (or both). I am investigating APT's sources to fix it (most likely missing setlocale('C') before version comparison). In the meantime, s/o responsible should URGENTLY read and considering my first comment, to fix root's locale to 'C' deep inside where noone can unset it. This workaround will temporarily fix _many_ other bugs affecting computer systems consistency, stability, etc. IMHO, once you (Ubuntu folk) decide to disable the root account -- which is the right way to go -- you are responsible for the consequences. Now what we have is a single user-visible entry point with 'sudo', and another (maybe few) in the system libraries, I'm not familiar with the latter. Fix it there, please. Root's locale _must_ be kept 'C' for a while. Wait for l10n to stabilize, then this can be reverted.

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

Likely not adept's fault -> invalidating the adept task.