Aptitude does not show reliably if a package is installed

[Binarus]

I have set up a new "oneiric" system (in a virtual machine) with architecture x86-64 from a minimal image ("net install"), installed some additional software, and installed all patches.

I have to mention that I did not select a predefined installation set (like "desktop", "server", "developer" etc.), but did the minimal install and then installed package by package what I needed, always using no other command than aptitude, and of course always following the recommends.

After some weeks, I was wondering why saslauthd had been installed; so I used apt-file to investigate. apt-file showed me that saslauthd belongs to package sasl2-bin. Therefore I was looking for all sasl packages being installed with the following commands and results:

root@baldur:~# aptitude search sasl
p cyrus-sasl2-dbg - Cyrus SASL - debugging symbols
p cyrus-sasl2-doc - Cyrus SASL - documentation
p cyrus-sasl2-heimdal-dbg - Cyrus SASL - debugging symbols for Heimdal modules
p cyrus-sasl2-mit-dbg - Cyrus SASL - debugging symbols for MIT modules
p gsasl - GNU SASL command line utility
p gsasl-dbg - GNU SASL debugging symbols
p libapache2-mod-authn-sasl - SASL authentication backend provider for Apache
p libauthen-sasl-cyrus-perl - Perl extension for Cyrus SASL library
p libauthen-sasl-perl - Authen::SASL - SASL Authentication framework
p libgsasl7 - GNU SASL library
p libgsasl7-dev - Development files for the GNU SASL library
p liblua5.1-cyrussasl-dev - Cyrus SASL development files for the Lua language version 5.1
p liblua5.1-cyrussasl0 - Cyrus SASL library for the Lua language version 5.1
p libqca2-plugin-cyrus-sasl - QCA Cyrus SASL plugin for libqca2
i libsasl2-2 - Cyrus SASL - authentication abstraction library
p libsasl2-dev - Cyrus SASL - development files for authentication abstraction
i libsasl2-modules - Cyrus SASL - pluggable authentication modules
p libsasl2-modules-gssapi-heimdal - Pluggable Authentication Modules for SASL (GSSAPI)
p libsasl2-modules-gssapi-mit - Cyrus SASL - pluggable authentication modules (GSSAPI)
p libsasl2-modules-ldap - Cyrus SASL - pluggable authentication modules (LDAP)
p libsasl2-modules-otp - Cyrus SASL - pluggable authentication modules (OTP)
p libsasl2-modules-sql - Cyrus SASL - pluggable authentication modules (SQL)
p php-auth-sasl - Abstraction of various SASL mechanism responses
p php5-sasl - Cyrus SASL extension for PHP 5
p sasl2-bin - Cyrus SASL - administration programs for SASL users database
root@baldur:~#

Note that sasl2-bin is shown as being NOT installed.

Wondering about that, I checked again by doing the following and got another result:

root@baldur:~# aptitude search sasl2-bin
i sasl2-bin - Cyrus SASL - administration programs for SASL users database
root@baldur:~#

In other words, "aptitude search sasl" tells that sasl2-bin is not installed, and "aptitude search sasl2-bin" tells that sasl2-bin is installed.

This is somehow frustrating, isn't it? Even worse, it may lead to serious consequences if the package maintaining utilities think a package is not installed although it is, or vice versa. I don't know if it's just bug in aptitude's output, or if aptitude under certain circumstances really thinks that the package in question isn't installed.

Since I am not an expert regarding apt and the package maintenance system, please tell me if you need further information to reproduce the problem.

Regards,

Binarus

[Binarus (mrzx4l98d4tp89jab6giohdrj-cx5zxo-hwbqs6tox1bv6csee9psn5309)]

Of course, I wanted to report this bug to the aptitude package!

Could some please move it over there?

Thanks,

Binarus