apt_check.py crashes with exception "AttributeError"

[No Spam]

On my Ubuntu server, I received the message for quite some time (> 1 year):
"The list of available updates is more than a week old"

I regularly run "apt update", so the message simply isn't true.
After some research, I manage to identify the script "/usr/lib/update-notifier/apt-check" as the root cause.
When executed with parameter "--human-readable", the following exception is thrown.
Without "--human-readable", no exception is thrown.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/pdb.py", line 1705, in main
    pdb._runscript(mainpyfile)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/pdb.py", line 1573, in _runscript
    self.run(statement)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/bdb.py", line 580, in run
    exec(cmd, globals, locals)
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/usr/lib/update-notifier/apt_check.py", line 6, in <module>
    import apt
  File "/usr/lib/update-notifier/apt_check.py", line 477, in run
    write_human_readable_summary(sys.stdout, upgrades, security_updates,
  File "/usr/lib/update-notifier/apt_check.py", line 249, in write_human_readable_summary
    esm_distro = is_esm_distro()
  File "/usr/lib/update-notifier/apt_check.py", line 150, in is_esm_distro
    DISTRO in ubuntu_distro.supported_esm()
AttributeError: 'UbuntuDistroInfo' object has no attribute 'supported_esm'
Uncaught exception. Entering post mortem debugging

Ubuntu version:

# cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Ubuntu"
VERSION="20.04.3 LTS (Focal Fossa)"
ID=ubuntu
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS"
VERSION_ID="20.04"
HOME_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://help.ubuntu.com/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://www.ubuntu.com/legal/terms-and-policies/privacy-policy"
VERSION_CODENAME=focal
UBUNTU_CODENAME=focal

[No Spam (spam-receiver)]

As a simple solution, I added a "try ... except" block around line 150. This solved the issue.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

What version of distro-info do you have installed? Do you happen to have a pip version of distro-info installed? There was an out of date version of distro-info in pypi that didn't have all the features of the one from the Ubuntu archive.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

For the record this works fine for me.

bdmurray@clean-focal-amd64:~$ /usr/lib/update-notifier/apt-check --human-readable
34 updates can be applied immediately.
13 of these updates are standard security updates.
To see these additional updates run: apt list --upgradable
bdmurray@clean-focal-amd64:~$ apt-cache policy distro-info
distro-info:
  Installed: 0.23ubuntu1
  Candidate: 0.23ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 0.23ubuntu1 500
        500 http://192.168.10.7/ubuntu focal/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[No Spam (spam-receiver)]

In reply to #3:

# apt list | grep distro-info

WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.

distro-info-data/focal-updates,focal-security,now 0.43ubuntu1.9 all [Installiert,automatisch]
distro-info/focal,now 0.23ubuntu1 amd64 [Installiert,automatisch]
libdistro-info-perl/focal 0.23ubuntu1 all
python3-distro-info/focal,now 0.23ubuntu1 all [Installiert,automatisch]

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Could you answer the second part of the question "Do you happen to have a pip version of distro-info installed? There was an out of date version of distro-info in pypi that didn't have all the features of the one from the Ubuntu archive."

[No Spam (spam-receiver)]

How do I find out?

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

On Mon, Jan 10, 2022 at 05:12:48PM -0000, No Spam wrote:
> How do I find out?

pip list should do the trick.

--
Brian Murray

[No Spam (spam-receiver)]

$ pip list | grep distro-info
distro-info 1.0

[No Spam (spam-receiver)]

$ sudo pip list | grep distro-info
distro-info 0.0.0

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

If you remove or update the pip install of distro-info for the root user this issue should be resolved.

[No Spam (spam-receiver)]

Thanks!

$ sudo pip uninstall distro-info
Found existing installation: distro-info 0.0.0
Uninstalling distro-info-0.0.0:
  Would remove:
    /usr/local/lib/python3.8/dist-packages/distro_info-0.0.0.dist-info/*
    /usr/local/lib/python3.8/dist-packages/distro_info.py
    /usr/local/lib/python3.8/dist-packages/distro_info_test/*
Proceed (Y/n)?
  Successfully uninstalled distro-info-0.0.0
WARNING: Running pip as the 'root' user can result in broken permissions and conflicting behaviour with the system package manager. It is recommended to use a virtual environment instead: https://pip.pypa.io/warnings/venv

$ sudo pip list | grep distro-info
distro-info 0.23ubuntu1

[No Spam (spam-receiver)]

Same for my user:

$ pip uninstall distro-info
Found existing installation: distro-info 1.0
Uninstalling distro-info-1.0:
  Would remove:
    /mnt/data/home/thomas/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/distro_info-1.0.dist-info/*
    /mnt/data/home/thomas/.local/lib/python3.8/site-packages/distro_info.py
Proceed (Y/n)?
  Successfully uninstalled distro-info-1.0

$ pip list | grep distro-info
distro-info 0.23ubuntu1

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

So did removing the pip version of distro-info resolve the issue for you?

[No Spam (spam-receiver)]

Yes, it seems to be solved after I reverted the changes I made to apt-check.py