“ua” man page not published for 14.04 LTS

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

A version of the “ua” tool was recently installed by default in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. <https://ubuntu.com/blog/ua-services-deployed-from-the-command-line-with-ua-client>

It has a man page. But searching manpages.ubuntu.com for “ua” <http://manpages.ubuntu.com/cgi-bin/search.py?q=ua> shows only versions for 18.04 LTS, 19.04, and 19.10.

[Joshua Powers (powersj)]

Confirmed, but I will have to dig into it more. Trusty is still in the code base to be generated.

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Problem #1:

The search is limited to non ESM releases.
- https://manpages.ubuntu.com/cgi-bin/search.py?q=ua
So not showing trusty or others atm <Focal is fine at this point
And on this level I see `ua` on each active release.

But I see a lack of the new name "pro" in many releases:
- https://manpages.ubuntu.com/cgi-bin/search.py?q=pro
- Lacks Focal, Jammy

P.S. Noble is still being built, that is fine to be missing for now

Problem #2 - no old pages at all:

So while ESM releases are not in the search output or the navbar, the content is kept around and even updated until they are really fully EOL.
Example:
- Take a normal package man page
  https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/focal/en/man1/awk.1posix.html
- You can still preprend it with trusty to get the older content
  https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/en/man1/awk.1posix.html

This behavior is not true for `ua` or `pro`.
Examples that do not, but should, exist:
- https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man1/ua.1.html
- https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bionic/man1/ua.1.html
- https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bionic/man1/pro.1.html
- https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/jammy/man1/pro.1.html
- https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/focal/man1/pro.1.html

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

In a recent local test run I've doen for something else which was building noble I've got both manpages created as I'd have expected:

root@manpages-microsite:/srv/manpages.ubuntu.com/www/manpages# find -name pro.1.html
./noble/man1/pro.1.html
root@manpages-microsite:/srv/manpages.ubuntu.com/www/manpages# find -name ua.1.html
./noble/man1/ua.1.html

Issue I see it downloading
- http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/bionic/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz
- find in there Package: ubuntu-advantage-tools
- Then it pool/main/u/ubuntu-advantage-tools/ubuntu-advantage-tools_17_all.deb

Here is the problem, this is the original version, not yet having the rename to "pro".
For the same reason there is no older "ua" manpage. It does not even have the package yet.

root@manpages-microsite:/srv/manpages.ubuntu.com# zgrep "Package: ubuntu-advantage-tools" Packages-bionic.gz
Package: ubuntu-advantage-tools
root@manpages-microsite:/srv/manpages.ubuntu.com# zgrep "Package: ubuntu-advantage-tools" Packages-trusty.gz

The tooling that renders the manpages would need to use the -updates / -security links to pick up things that got changed/added. Without it even bugfixes that change manpages of any page will continue to just show the old content over and over.

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

TL;DR of the problem:
- use http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/trusty-updates/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz
- instead of http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/trusty/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz
- Changing that should fix both issues ... (with quite some delay of rebuilding a lot)

The code only iterates over what is given in the config.
And OTOH the current devel release has -updates and such not yet poulated.
To unblock this faster we might ignore for now that -security and -updates might sometimes differ, sooner or later -updates always should have it all.
Furthermore -esm updates itself would not be there either.

Arr, so much, but making things better one step at a time ...
The config is auto-generated based on launchpad.projects['ubuntu'].series and the .active attribute.

Anyway, there is just one place this needs to change which is the automatic updater of active series to build docs for => bin/manpages-modify-config

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Merge request to fix this: https://code.launchpad.net/~paelzer/ubuntu-manpage-repository/production-consider-updates/+merge/456308

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

The code is fixed, but deploying that takes a while.
We are currently waiting for the recent releases (noble and mantic) to properly generate all content.
Only then would we ask to re-deploy to the new version which will - as it finally picks up updates - re-generate a lot and again take a while.

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

FYI, I can't even count how many extra issues we've found and fixed along the way.
But it is a side-effort for everyone involved and since it often includes "ok now lets wait for the full run this time" moments which causes everyone's attention to drifts off again.

Just wanted to state that this is not forgotten and should (tm) soon work (it does on they myriad of local test runs).

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Finally,
I manged to ensure that these updates run for old release (like trusty in your case) and to consider correctly the updates of the package if there are any.

Due to that there is now a proper https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/en/man1/ua.1.html and the same is true for all other manpages to finally get the correct rendering of the updated package versions.

In regard to the search, that is trying to avoid overload so http://manpages.ubuntu.com/cgi-bin/search.py?q=ua will still only show active releases. Just like the top NAV bar, which is limited to pre-ESM releases as well.

Thanks for this being a good hint though, I've taken a note that we need to find a way how to also deliver results for releases in extended support without overloading the UI, but given how many iterations I needed to run with many people to get this rendering back in good shape I doubt this will be quick.
=> That aspect is now in bug 2051641

Until then as a fallback you can in any link you find try to change the release to get there.
For example your search link gets you to
- https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/focal/en/man1/ua.1.html
Exchange the release there to trusty and you get the correct
- https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/en/man1/ua.1.html