What is this shit?  Who is this?
On Sep 26, 2014 5:36 AM, "Colin Watson" <email address hidden> wrote:

> Fixed in utopic now:
>
> man-db (2.7.0-1) unstable; urgency=medium
>
>   * New upstream release:
>     - Add systemd tmpfiles snippet to clean up old cat files after a week.
>     - Run "col -b -p -x" over cat pages if possible before parsing them
>       (closes: #751934).
>     - Move database mtime out of the database into file metadata, making
> the
>       database reproducible between installations (closes: #760895).
>     - Use high-precision timestamps.
>     - Order files by first physical extent before reading (closes:
> #574410).
>     - Prioritise COLUMNS above TIOCGWINSZ (LP: #1315282).
>     - Formatting improvements to man(1) (closes: #726266).
>     - Don't use pointed-to name as title for database-located pages
> (closes:
>       #709405).
>     - Move zsoelim to /usr/lib/man-db/.
>   * Remove unnecessary entries from debian/dirs.
>   * Cache the value of man-db/auto-update in the file system, so that we
>     don't have to talk to debconf when processing triggers (closes:
>     #579075).
>   * Add MIME handlers (thanks, Kevin Ryde; closes: #725157).
>   * Override the long-standing Lintian warning for non-standard-dir-perm on
>     /var/cache/man.
>   * Adjust cron.daily to skip cat file cleanup if running under systemd,
>     since the upstream-provided tmpfiles snippet now handles that.
>   * Rebuild the database on upgrade to this version, since the format has
>     changed.
>
>  -- Colin Watson <email address hidden>  Mon, 22 Sep 2014 19:43:40 +0100
>
> ** Changed in: man-db (Ubuntu)
>        Status: Fix Committed => Fix Released
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to a
> duplicate bug report (1201179).
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1372673
>
> Title:
>   excessive debconf use when triggered
>
> Status in “man-db” package in Ubuntu:
>   Fix Released
> Status in “man-db” source package in Lucid:
>   Fix Committed
> Status in “man-db” source package in Precise:
>   Fix Committed
> Status in “man-db” source package in Trusty:
>   Fix Committed
> Status in “man-db” package in Debian:
>   Fix Released
>
> Bug description:
>   SRU justification:
>
>   [Impact]
>
>   We see rather frequent hard-to-debug upgrade failures that amount to
>   man-db's trigger failing in some way that has nothing to do with the
>   mandb program itself, but rather in some kind of communication with
>   the package management frontend.  Almost all the open bugs on Ubuntu
>   man-db come down to this in one way or another.  The root cause is, I
>   believe, that it is not really safe to use debconf from a dpkg
>   trigger: while debconf itself behaves as if it were Essential, the
>   debconf protocol is often mediated by various frontends with less
>   stringent practices.  It would certainly be a good idea to get man-
>   db's trigger out of the loop here, as dpkg tends to run it at the end
>   of an unpack phase when large numbers of packages are unconfigured,
>   which is pretty much the worst case for having this work properly.
>
>   In the past I've tried to investigate why debconf fails in these
>   situations.  I've come to believe this is a wild goose chase, and that
>   the common case of ordinary postinsts sourcing the debconf confmodule
>   is much less likely to be a problem due to the nature of
>   unpack/configure sequencing; I admit that I don't have proof of this,
>   but having one fewer script using debconf is surely not going to make
>   things worse, and since lots of unpack runs pull the man-db trigger it
>   seems likely to improve things substantially.
>
>   The man-db trigger reads a single value from debconf to tell it
>   whether to automatically update the manual page database (used by
>   apropos and whatis).  This is in an agreed location in debconf so that
>   such things as package builders can save time by suppressing the
>   database update.  There is, however, no reason to read this value
>   every time the trigger is activated; we can just cache it under
>   /var/lib/man-db/ when man-db is configured and then do a much simpler
>   file-level test in the trigger.  I should have thought of this years
>   ago.
>
>   To have the maximum benefit for upgraders, we should do what we can to
>   ensure that they have a fixed version of man-db installed before the
>   upgrade.  I'd therefore like to apply this fix to all currently-
>   supported releases.
>
>   [Test Case]
>
>   I don't have a reliable reproduction scenario, but I have two
>   suggestions, which are in the sort of general vein of unit testing and
>   integration testing respectively:
>
>    * Install the new version of man-db and check that it causes
> /var/lib/man-db/auto-update to exist if and only if the debconf value for
> man-db/auto-update is true, and in turn that this still causes the database
> to be updated or not updated respectively when installing a package
> containing a manual page.
>    * After installing the new version of man-db, upgrade to the next
> supported or development series using the upgrade tool of your choice.
>
>   [Regression Potential]
>
>   Installing packages that contain manual pages and running system
>   upgrades should exercise this pretty thoroughly.  Since in general
>   this weakens the constraints on achieving successful upgrades, the
>   main thing to watch out for would just be things like inverted logic
>   that might cause the database not to be updated when it should be or
>   vice versa.
>
>   Original report follows, imported from Debian bug
>   http://bugs.debian.org/579075:
>
>   Package: man-db
>   Version: 2.5.7-2
>   Severity: wishlist
>
>   I noticed that man-db starts debconf when triggered. Given how
>   often triggers run, I think that should be optimised. Ie, move
>   the $1 = triggered test above the confmodule sourcing.
>
>   -- System Information:
>   Debian Release: squeeze/sid
>     APT prefers unstable
>     APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable')
>   Architecture: i386 (i686)
>
>   Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-3-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
>   Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
>   Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
>
>   Versions of packages man-db depends on:
>   ii  bsdmainutils            8.0.10           collection of more
> utilities from
>   ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]   1.5.32           Debian configuration
> management sy
>   ii  dpkg                    1.15.7.1         Debian package management
> system
>   ii  groff-base              1.20.1-9         GNU troff text-formatting
> system (
>   ii  libc6                   2.10.2-6         Embedded GNU C Library:
> Shared lib
>   ii  libgdbm3                1.8.3-9          GNU dbm database routines
> (runtime
>   ii  zlib1g                  1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3 compression library -
> runtime
>
>   man-db recommends no packages.
>
>   Versions of packages man-db suggests:
>   ii            5.0.386.0~svn20100423r45407-0u Chromium browser
>   ii            2.30.2-1                       Intuitive GNOME web browser
>   pn            <none>                         (no description available)
>   ii            3.5.9-2                        Web browser based on Firefox
>   ii            436-1                          pager program similar to
> more
>   ii            0.5.2-4                        WWW browsable pager with
> excellent
>
>   -- debconf information excluded
>
>   --
>   see shy jo
>
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