update-pciids weird behavior

[Félix Velasco]

Binary package hint: pciutils

update-pciids.sh downloads a newer version of the pci.ids file. If available, it first downloads an bzip2 version of the file, then a gzipped one, then the plain text version. Then, it decompresses it and stores it in a plain, uncompressed text file.

However, there is a debian patch that tries to modify it so it keeps the gzipped version. However, the patch doesn't work, and ends creating a /usr/share/misc/pci.ids.gz file, that's not gzipped. lspci however, reads first the .gz, and it works though it's not gzipped. That's why it has gone unnoticed.

Steps to reproduce:
With a clear installation:

$ls -l /usr/share/misc/pci.ids*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 428084 2007-03-05 11:51 /usr/share/misc/pci.ids

$ sudo update-pciids
--12:54:47-- http://pciids.sourceforge.net/v2.2/pci.ids.bz2
           => `/usr/share/misc/pci.ids.gz.new'
Resolviendo pciids.sourceforge.net... 66.35.250.209
Conectando a pciids.sourceforge.net|66.35.250.209|:80... conectado.
Petición HTTP enviada, esperando respuesta... 200 OK
Longitud: 120,972 (118K) [text/plain]

100%[=================================================================================================================>] 120,972 21.89K/s ETA 00:00

12:54:53 (21.21 KB/s) - `/usr/share/misc/pci.ids.gz.new' guardado [120972/120972]

Done.

(notice how it downloads the .bz2 version and saves it as .gz.new)
$ ls -l /usr/share/misc/pci.ids*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 428084 2007-03-05 11:51 /usr/share/misc/pci.ids
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 462320 2007-05-09 12:57 /usr/share/misc/pci.ids.gz

$file /usr/share/misc/pci.ids.gz
/usr/share/misc/pci.ids.gz: ASCII English text, with CR, LF line terminators

(notice how /usr/share/misc/pci.ids is untouched, and /usr/share/misc/pci.ids.gz is NOT a gzipped file).

[Félix Velasco (felix-velasco)]

Sorry, I got some points wrong. There's no debian patch.

The construction process (Makefile) modifies the update-pciids script, setting it to store a .gz file if zlib is available (as detected by lib/configure). However, this is only a cosmetic change, since the file is not gzipped.

[Stéphane Loeuillet (leroutier)]

/usr/share/misc/pci.ids is not used anymore
You can safely remove it

an update script forgot to do it

--------------------

For the file name, it's unfortunate to end with .gz as it is not compressed but that's not a big deal

[Tim Gardner (timg-tpi)]

Just updated Trusty pciutils which worked fine for me. I didn't find any extraneous files after running update-pciids.sh.