Installing multiple dbgsym packages fails

[Dmitry Shachnev]

On Yakkety, installing a single -dbgsym package using apt works fine. However, if I specify multiple on a command line, I get this:

$ sudo apt install metacity-dbgsym gnome-flashback-dbgsym
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  gnome-flashback-dbgsym metacity-dbgsym
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/1168 kB of archives.
After this operation, 4972 kB of additional disk space will be used.
dpkg: error: searched, but found no packages (files matching *.deb)
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

The *.deb wildcard is wrong because the packages actually have a .ddeb extension, i.e. /var/cache/apt/archives/gnome-flashback-dbgsym_3.20.2-1ubuntu1_amd64.ddeb.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.10
Package: apt 1.3~rc2ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-9134.53-generic 4.4.15
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-9134-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.3-0ubuntu7
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: GNOME-Flashback:Unity
Date: Thu Aug 25 15:44:22 2016
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-08-23 (732 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.10 "Utopic Unicorn" - Alpha amd64 (20140823)
SourcePackage: apt
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to yakkety on 2016-04-28 (119 days ago)

[David Kalnischkies (donkult)]

APT is using dpkg's --recursive option with a temporary directory since recently if it has to touch >5 packages to avoid producing too long commandlines for the kernel (yes, that is a thing… although unlikely it does happen in big upgrades). Seems like this interface in dpkg does support only *.deb files. Debian had decided to stick with .deb for their automatic debug packages to avoid changing all tools dealing with deb files to also deal with ddeb (or whatever).

Anyway, as that used to work with apt and is a valid althrough uncommon thing to have packages without .deb as extension I have just commited a patch upstream: https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/apt/apt.git/commit/?id=4f242a2

As a workaround you can set the option "dpkg::install::recursive" to false and "dpkg::install::recursive::force" to true OR set "dpkg::install::recursive::minimum" to e.g. 100 (assuming you can accept not installing a 100 ddebs at once for the time being). Both workarounds effect all dpkg calls through, so please only use if needed until the patch reaches Ubuntu – don't set it "forever" or you will eventually run into the problems this is designed to void in the first place…

[Dmitry Shachnev (mitya57)]

Thanks for the quick fix! :)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package apt - 1.3~rc3ubuntu2

---------------
apt (1.3~rc3ubuntu2) yakkety; urgency=medium

  * test-apt-cdrom: Fix for gnupg 2.1.15
  * Revert "test: Assert multi-arch in the chroot"
  * Revert "test: Make sure we always find a dpkg in status file"

 -- Julian Andres Klode <email address hidden> Thu, 01 Sep 2016 13:06:14 +0000