apticron calls apt-listchanges with incorrect arguments

[Ben Coleman]

After updating to 16.10, apticron report emails no longer show Package Details, instead showing the usage message from apt-listchanges. E.g.:

apticron report [Thu, 09 Mar 2017 19:09:15 -0500]
========================================================================

apticron has detected that some packages need upgrading on:

 dos3.benshome.net
 [ 104.131.218.115 10.128.254.248 2001:470:1f07:3f3::1 ]
 [ 2001:470:1f06:3f3::2 104.131.218.115 2001:470:1f07:3f3::1 ]

The following packages are currently pending an upgrade:

 libarchive13 3.2.1-2ubuntu0.1

========================================================================

Package Details:

Usage: apt-listchanges [options] {--apt | filename.deb ...}

Looks like perhaps apt-listchanges has had a change in argument format, and apticron hasn't been changed to accomodate it?

[Ben Coleman (oloryn)]

This problem still exists in 17.04.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Ben Coleman (oloryn)]

OK, I dug into this a bit. I added the line

print("apt-listchanges arguments: ", str(sys.argv))

as the first line of main in apt-listchanges. Next time apticron was called, it produced this:

---
apticron report [Tue, 27 Jun 2017 23:14:42 -0400]
========================================================================

apticron has detected that some packages need upgrading on:

 morannon.ln.benshome.net
 [ 172.17.113.244 ]

The following packages are currently pending an upgrade:

 bsdutils 1:2.29-1ubuntu2.1
 grub-legacy-ec2 0.7.9-153-g16a7302f-0ubuntu1~17.04.1
 libblkid1 2.29-1ubuntu2.1
 libfdisk1 2.29-1ubuntu2.1
 libmount1 2.29-1ubuntu2.1
 libnss-resolve 232-21ubuntu5
 libpam-systemd 232-21ubuntu5
 libsmartcols1 2.29-1ubuntu2.1
 libsystemd0 232-21ubuntu5
 libudev1 232-21ubuntu5
 libuuid1 2.29-1ubuntu2.1
 mount 2.29-1ubuntu2.1
 nplan 0.23~17.04.1
 systemd 232-21ubuntu5
 systemd-sysv 232-21ubuntu5
 udev 232-21ubuntu5
 util-linux 2.29-1ubuntu2.1
 uuid-runtime 2.29-1ubuntu2.1

========================================================================

Package Details:

Usage: apt-listchanges [options] {--apt | filename.deb ...}
apt-listchanges arguments: ['/usr/bin/apt-listchanges', '--which=both', '--headers', '-f', 'text']
---

The problem appears to be that there are no .deb files provided (as all of the other arguments look valid). The execution of apt-listchanges is in line 225 of /usr/sbin/aptcron (on 17.10):

/usr/bin/apt-listchanges --which=both --headers -f text $DEBS

It would appear that $DEBS at this point is empty, rather than containing pathnames for the .debs to be listed. This would seem to point to a problem in lines 194 - 213, where DEBS is set.

[Ben Coleman (oloryn)]

This might be related to http://git.net/ml/general/2016-09/msg13810.html

[Ben Coleman (oloryn)]

Tied that last link to the Debian bug, linked above. That includes a patch, or since apticron seems to have fixed this in 1.1.59, 1.1.61 (which is in artful) could be backported.