apt-mark segfaults when holding an already held package

[Ken Sharp]

I'm trying to hold back a package but apt-mark keeps segfaulting.

# apt-mark hold wine1.7 wine1.7-dbg wine1.7-amd64
wine1.7 was already set on hold.
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

dmesg:
traps: apt-mark[505732] general protection ip:404d5f sp:7fff0f4a3330 error:0 in apt-mark[400000+a000]

The hold does seem to be put in place for the first package, but any additional packages have to be held one-by-one due to the fault.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: apt 0.8.16~exp12ubuntu10.16
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-33.48~precise1-generic 3.8.13.11
Uname: Linux 3.8.0-33-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu17.6
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Dec 8 19:11:03 2013
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20130820.1)
MarkForUpload: True
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: apt
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

This is trivially reproducable by installing wine and then using the following:

(precise-amd64)root@impulse:/home/bdmurray# apt-mark hold wine1.4
wine1.4 set on hold.
(precise-amd64)root@impulse:/home/bdmurray# apt-mark hold wine1.4
wine1.4 was already set on hold.
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

This does not happen on Trusty, so I am setting the bug to Fix Released but will open release tasks as appropriate.

(trusty-amd64)root@impulse:/home/bdmurray# apt-mark hold 2vcard
2vcard set on hold.
(trusty-amd64)root@impulse:/home/bdmurray# apt-mark hold 2vcard
2vcard was already set on hold.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

This only affects Precise and does not crash for Q,R,S or T.

[Martin Tournoij (7-martin)]

This also happens with unhold:

[~]# apt-mark unhold .\*
python2.7-minimal:any was already not hold.
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
Exit 139

[~]# uname -a
Linux martin-xps 3.5.0-41-generic #64somerville8-Ubuntu SMP Wed Oct 2 09:57:33 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[~]# cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS \n \l

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

It looks to me like the fix for this may be contained in this diff:

https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/apt/ubuntu/revision/1984#cmdline/apt-mark.cc

Particularly the changes around lines 222 to 235 e.g.

for (APT::PackageList::iterator Pkg = pkgset.begin(); Pkg != pkgset.end();)
...

The change may be more obvious in the git branch for apt.

[Justin Fortier (jfortier)]

Yeah having the same issue here, and it was causing issues with my puppet script to fail because it's not exiting cleanly with a 0/1 exit status. I fixed the puppet script to accept error code 139 which seems to be the error code it exits with.

[Diego Rodriguez (habaner0)]

I'm getting this issue as well on ubuntu 12.04

uname -a
Linux 3.2.0-69-virtual #103-Ubuntu SMP Tue Sep 2 05:21:29 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

The Precise Pangolin has reached end of life, so this bug will not be fixed for that release