aptitude crashes when trying to install lintian

[Vassilis Pandis]

This happens with aptitude 0.4.1-1.1ubuntu2, on Edgy. Installing other packages is fine, but trying lintian crashes. This shouldn't be a problem in lintian, since it never gets to download it it and furthermore, it installs fine through apt-get.

pandis@pandis-laptop:~/tmp$ sudo aptitude install lintian
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Building tag database... Done
Segmentation fault
pandis@pandis-laptop:~/tmp$

Attached you will find a debug backtrace. Thanks.

[Vassilis Pandis (pandisv)]

After installing lintian with apt-get, and without removing lintian, 'sudo aptitude install lintian' no longer crashes and works as expected (i.e. does nothing). Then I do 'sudo apt-get remove lintian' and 'sudo aptitude install lintian' and again, no crash. Afterwards, 'sudo aptitude purge lintian' and 'sudo aptitude install lintian' are also working fine...

[Mateusz Drożdżyński (matid)]

I config the same bug when trying to install bugzilla package.
I attach the backtrace.

[Mateusz Drożdżyński (matid)]

I attach the output from Valgrind too, since it might be helpful.

[Vassilis Pandis (pandisv)]

Installing sketch also causes aptitude to crash ...

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreport.

Could you please check if a rebuild of aptitude helps to fix the issue? Please run:
$ sudo apt-get build-dep aptitude
$ sudo apt-get source -b aptitude
and install the build packages.

Thanks,
 Michael

[Mateusz Drożdżyński (matid)]

Unfortunately, rebuilding doesn't fix the issue.

[Vassilis Pandis (pandisv)]

It doesn't - I had to rebuild to get the debug version of aptitude (out of curiosity: how is rebuilding supposed to solve the issue - I know it sometimes does, but why?)

[Vassilis Pandis (pandisv)]

Same result with 'dia'.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks, I can reproduce this problem here with apt-get as well, it looks like a problem with in libapt :
$ sudo apt-get install --reinstall-recommends dia
segfaults as well.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

The attached patch should fix the problem. I commited it to my bzr tree and it will be part of the next upload. If you could confirm that it fixes the segfault for you, that would be ncie.

About your questions why a rebuild often helps: in C++ its easy to break a public interface in a way that makes older applications that are linked to the libarary break in subtle ways. The fix is of course to change the c++ library .so name to avoid breakage. But sometimes (by accident) this is not done by the maintainer. A simple rebuild solve this kind of problem because all that is required is a relinking against the new library.

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

The last patch does not apply to the current edgy tree, sorry for this. Find attached a updated version.

[Mateusz Drożdżyński (matid)]

The update fixed the issue for me.

[Vassilis Pandis (pandisv)]

(It didn't apply cleanly for some reason so I applied it manually) It seems to be fixed. I installed 'dia' and 'sketch' without problems. Consider the problem solved and if it happens again I'll follow up on this bug report. Thanks.