Ubuntu
update-manager package

update-manager crashed with OSError in _execute_child()

Bug #244739 reported by Derrick Hudson on 2008-07-02

This bug report is a duplicate of: Bug #219518: dist-upgrade fails if /tmp is non-executable (mounted as noexec). Edit Remove

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	update-manager (Ubuntu)	Triaged	Medium	Unassigned	Ubuntu intrepid-alpha-3

Bug Description

Binary package hint: update-manager

update-manager needs to catch and handle failure to execute gksu. At the time of this crash, gksu was not executable. My report is not about execute permission on gksu, but rather about update-manager handling the error more gracefully.

ProblemType: Crash
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Jul 1 21:08:15 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/update-manager
InterpreterPath: /usr/bin/python2.5
Package: update-manager 1:0.87.24
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcCmdline: /usr/bin/python2.5 /usr/bin/update-manager
ProcEnviron:
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SHELL=/bin/zsh
PythonArgs: ['/usr/bin/update-manager']
SourcePackage: update-manager
Title: update-manager crashed with OSError in _execute_child()
Uname: Linux 2.6.24-18-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin audio cdrom dialout floppy fuse lpadmin plugdev scanner src staff video

Tags:

Revision history for this message

Derrick Hudson (dman) wrote on 2008-07-02:

Dependencies.txt Edit (4.4 KiB, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
ProcMaps.txt Edit (22.7 KiB, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
ProcStatus.txt Edit (713 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")
Traceback.txt Edit (490 bytes, text/plain; charset="utf-8")

Revision history for this message

Michael Vogt (mvo) wrote on 2008-07-10:

Thanks,

this happens when /tmp is mounted nonexec usually. Could you please check/confirm this?

Changed in update-manager:
importance:	Undecided → Medium
milestone:	none → intrepid-alpha-3
status:	New → Triaged

Revision history for this message

Derrick Hudson (dman) wrote on 2008-08-06:

No, this crash was not caused by mount flags on /tmp. It was caused by removing execute permission from the gksu binary in /usr/bin. (I removed that permission bit, not some part of the Ubuntu system) The stack trace gathered by the crash reporter tool shows a different starting point than the one in #219518.

Only tangential to this, gksu usually fails to display the first time update-manager executes it. After I kill it, then retry the upgrade it works. I was experimenting to try find a resolution. Since I couldn't uninstall gksu, I removed the execute bit expecting udpate-manager to skip it and try gnomesu instead. That is how I arrived at this situation.

Although update-manager is not responsible for my interference with the system, it shouldn't crash. It should catch the error and, at the very least, simply display an error message.

Unless the patch you uploaded corrects run_synaptic() in UpdateManager.py, this bug should not be marked a duplicate of #219518.