Subject: WARNING! New Perl/Perl-base upgrade removes 141 Sid/Unstable packages

From: Cindy-Sue Causey <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 09:26:36 -0400

Good morning! Just a heads up that upgrading the following two
packages attempts to remove 141 unrelated packages in Sid/Unstable
this morning:

perl 5.24.1~rc3-2
perl-base 5.24.1~rc3-2

I grab AMD64 packages in case that makes a difference AND I have other
larger packages still waiting to be upgraded, as well.A total of
almost 400MB the last couple days! Am on dialup and have to be
selective about the order in which packages are upgraded in between
taking the opportunity to actually participate online.

Yes, a bug has been filed, just minutes ago, and only against Perl at this time.

Just sharing because I was in a hurry and almost let it happen. I
don't want anyone else to accidentally do the same. For newcomers,
*always* protect yourself by making sure you backup your current state
before upgrading, specifically for days like today.

Good luck and Happy Debian'ing!

Cindy :)

-- 
Cindy-Sue Causey
Talking Rock, Pickens County, Georgia, USA

* runs with duct tape *

---

From: Ben Caradoc-Davies <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 2016 10:37:25 +1300

> packages attempts to remove 141 unrelated packages in Sid/Unstable

Before running "apt-get dist-upgrade", I always simulate first with:

apt-get dist-upgrade -s -V

in case "apt-get dist-upgrade" want to resolve a conflict by doing 
something helpful like removing most of an architecture or desktop. The 
same simulation works with "apt-get upgrade", which is much less 
aggressive and continues to work during a dist-upgrade-breaking transition.

Kind regards,

-- 
Ben Caradoc-Davies <[email-masked]>
Director
Transient Software Limited <http://transient.nz/>
New Zealand

---

From: Glenn English <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 10:38:19 -0600

> On Sep 24, 2016, at 7:26 AM, Cindy-Sue Causey <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> Am on dialup and have to be
> selective about the order in which packages are upgraded

Have you considered a local, partial mirror? A 64G thumbdrive doesn't cost much, it'd hold a lot of .debs, the local mirror can be added at the top of your apt sources file, and cron could run the update at night. There are scripts readily available to do this.

The script I use is pretty old, but it keeps my mirror up to date, and it's a good sport about being stopped and starting again where it left off.

-- 
Glenn English

---

From: John Hasler <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 13:12:32 -0500

Package: cron-apt
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: admin
Installed-Size: 43
Maintainer: Ola Lundqvist <[email-masked]>
Architecture: all
Version: 0.9.3
Depends: apt
Recommends: liblockfile1, mailx, cron | cron-daemon
Conffiles:
 /etc/cron.d/cron-apt 293b1638131468f398152865bac245d4
 /etc/logrotate.d/cron-apt a733dd41a64a7cc134ef258e852d135f
 /etc/cron-apt/action.d/0-update bd7e303bb529e32e21411dab0e365376
 /etc/cron-apt/action.d/3-download 5a3653966fa49e0ab13a83e005cf5ed1
 /etc/cron-apt/config 4cec1bc433bbc073eec573c94d5f9f2e
Description-en: automatic update of packages using apt-get
 Contains a tool that is run by a cron job at regular intervals. By default it
 just updates the package list and downloads new packages without installing.
 You can instruct it to run anything that you can do with apt-get
 (or aptitude).
 .
 It can optionally send mail to the system administrator on errors, log
 to syslog or a separate log file.
 .
 Observe that this tool may be a security risk, so you should not set it
 to do more than necessary. Automatic upgrade of all packages is NOT
 recommended unless you are in full control of the package repository.
Description-md5: 2e64c2fc7f0c5ac0fd844be065a8a152

-- 
John Hasler 
[email-masked]
Elmwood, WI USA

---

From: Sven Hartge <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 15:48:15 +0200

> Yes, a bug has been filed, just minutes ago, and only against Perl at this time.

Why would you think this is a bug? This is just a normal Perl-API
transition, the packages need to be rebuild against the new perl to be
compatible.

This _is_ Unstable after all, things like this happen all the time.

Just use only "apt upgrade" for a few days until the transition is over.

See https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=838760#10 as well.

S°

-- 
Sigmentation fault. Core dumped.

---

From: Cindy-Sue Causey <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 11:33:58 -0400

> This _is_ Unstable after all, things like this happen all the time.

YES, I know this is Unstable. That's why I specifically made that
declaration in the email's subject line and other (i.e. "the bug
report", grin). I'm one of the ones who issues that statement herself
on regular occasion.

I'm actually looking around at various distributions/releases because
Unstable is so constantly changing right now. There's 400MB+ needing
upgraded again, potentially almost 500MB since that 400MB+ number is
courtesy "apt-get upgrade", GRIN.

YES, that is Unstable's *expected* business as usual and opens the
door to consider the *_CHOICE_* of potentially better using that much
download time plus server wear-and-tear to make a new start somehow.

> See https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=838760#10 as well.

This email's very wholesome purpose was to serve as a notice to
newbies (and people like me with cognitive disabilities) who
could/would miss that they need to pay wide open attention today.

"apt-get install"..... It *does* stop and give you that advisement
that you're about to remove a bunch of packages. It's then the user's
*_CHOICE_* to select yes or no regarding continuing the operation.

It *would be nice* if there was an even more visual... a more "stern",
stimulating trigger...... of some kind. Just this second, I don't know
what would help newer users AND keep seasoned users happy at the same
time.

I saw this as a bug because 141 packages were being not only disabled
but removed. Along the lines of my thoughts about apt-get's advisement
in more extreme situations like this, perhaps a nice wishlist item for
reportbug would be that it... I don't know.... guides the user based
on its finding of the Sid/Unstable declaration (variable), as well,
e.g. that part where reportbug picks up and reports this:

"Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')"

What you're saying about the use of "apt-get upgrade", that's just
what I was saying the other day about the difference in how "apt-get
install" and "apt-get upgrade" reacts...

Except that...

In the case I was saying the other day, it wasn't like this.
Libreoffice was installing fine via "apt-get install". There were no
glitches, no potentially negative advisements, to be seen in the
"install" action towards upgrade. BUT if I performed a wide open,
generic "apt-get upgrade" (purely on a whim), many libreoffice
packages (including libreoffice itself) were then held back.

Just tested it again and am still receiving the following (regarding
libreoffice only via "apt-get upgrade"):

"The following packages have been kept back:
  libreoffice libreoffice-avmedia-backend-gstreamer libreoffice-base
libreoffice-base-core libreoffice-base-drivers libreoffice-calc
libreoffice-core libreoffice-draw libreoffice-impress libreoffice-math
libreoffice-report-builder-bin libreoffice-sdbc-firebird
libreoffice-sdbc-hsqldb libreoffice-writer"

Per your suggestion, perl and perl-base are, YES, additionally now
included in what's being reported as being held back for that same
"apt-get upgrade" just now. :)

PS There are a couple other packages in there that have been in there
for a VERY. LONG. TIME. Won't mention any names publicly here....
mostly because I'm not 100% sure why they're there.

One's a possibly much lesser known but the other is something touched
on with the most basic of installs via debootstrap. I think that one's
ok to let have its head with package deletion via "apt-get install",
but I need to *cognitively* understand first before following through.

The one most basic of packages wants to remove openjdk-7-jre and
openjdk-7-jre-headless. By doing things as manually as I have to do, I
experience the nice advantage of knowing that openjdk-8-jre and
openjdk-8-jre-headless are installed as the wave of the Future. I just
don't want to a-sume it's ok to let the prior ones being automatically
deleted until I read someone with authority saying that's the next
step up, especially since "apt-get upgrade" considers it a situation
that needs held back. :)

Cindy :)

* runs with duct tape *

---

From: Seeker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 12:14:04 -0700

First off I have been playing around with 'compose > text' and 'send >
text' options in Thunderbird so I apologize ahead of time if A: lines
are excessively long and B: that is an issue for you in whatever you
are using to read this.

On 9/24/2016 8:33 AM, Cindy-Sue Causey wrote:

<Snip>

> "The following packages have been kept back: libreoffice
> libreoffice-avmedia-backend-gstreamer libreoffice-base
> libreoffice-core libreoffice-draw libreoffice-impress
> libreoffice-math libreoffice-report-builder-bin
> libreoffice-sdbc-firebird libreoffice-sdbc-hsqldb
> libreoffice-writer"
>

Normal behavior for 'apt-get upgrade', will not install anything new in
a literal, based on package name sort of way and also will not install
anything that would cause a package to be removed. So if upgrading
LibreOffice would pull in something you don't already have it will get
held back. If there is a version as part of the package name so
libsomething01 would have to be removed and libsomething02 would have to
be install, then you have a removal of a package you have and install of
something you don't so again it gets held back.

I have not looked into what all differences there are between 'apt
upgrade' versus 'apt-get upgrade', but one difference is that 'apt
upgrade' will pull in new packages in order to upgrade something you
already have.

I don't normally upgrade from the command line, so have not used 'apt
upgrade' enough to notice if it will do the upgrade in cases where
libsomething01 has to be removed and libsomething02 has to be installed.

Later, Seeker

---

From: John Hasler <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 13:18:35 -0500

Copied from debian-devel-announce:

From: Dominic Hargreaves <[email-masked]>
Subject: Perl 5.24 transition underway
To: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 18:57:14 +0100 (17 minutes, 7 seconds ago)
Mail-Followup-To: Dominic Hargreaves <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Resent-From: [email-masked]

Yesterday[0] I uploaded Perl 5.24 to Debian unstable, starting a 500+ package
transition. Wide uninstallability is to be expected in sid for the next
few days until the necessary rebuilds have been completed. Please avoid
unnecessary uploads of affected packages [1] until the transition is
over and perl has migrated to testing. There is no need to submit
bug reports against perl about the uninstallability of related
packages during this transition.

See the "perldelta" document [2] for information
on upstream changes since 5.22.

Cheers,
Dominic.

[0] I'm sorry that this message has only been distributed now. It was
    originally sent yesterday, but the list server blackholed it.
[1] https://release.debian.org/transitions/html/perl5.24.html
[2] https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/perl/pod/perldelta.pod
-- 
John Hasler 
[email-masked]
Elmwood, WI USA

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 09:44:15 -0400

> packages attempts to remove 141 unrelated packages in Sid/Unstable

...

> before upgrading, specifically for days like today.

For my own education, I'm not sure what you mean by "backup your current state
before upgrading"--does that mean a full backup of your system, or is there a 
way to somehow save the current "state" of the package list on your system so 
that you can easily request those packages be restored if something goes 
wrong?

---

From: Glenn English <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 10:02:25 -0600

> On Sep 24, 2016, at 7:44 AM, [email-masked] wrote:
> 

I think that saving the contents of /var/cache/apt/archive(s?) will save copies of all the .debs installed on your machine. OTOH, it also gets .debs that *used* to be on your machine. If you're running sid, bring a big thumbdrive...

-- 
Glenn English

---

From: Christian Seiler <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 18:36:21 +0200

On 09/24/2016 06:02 PM, Glenn English wrote:
> I think that saving the contents of /var/cache/apt/archive(s?) will
> save copies of all the .debs installed on your machine. OTOH, it also
> gets .debs that *used* to be on your machine. If you're running sid,
> bring a big thumbdrive...

Note that the new apt wrapper removes .debs after installation by
default. (apt-get and aptitude will keep the .deb files though.)

So if you use

apt install foo

or

apt upgrade

then the packages that were downloaded won't be there after the
installation completed successfully. (They will be in the cache
directory after download and before the installation is done.)

You can change that behavior via:

echo 'Binary::apt::APT::Keep-Downloaded-Packages "true";' \
      > /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/01keep-debs

(See also /usr/share/doc/apt/NEWS.Debian.gz for details.)

Regarding the original problem: I'd recommend to anyone running
sid to also have testing in their sources.list - so they can
force the installation of an older package version while a
transition is still ongoing. Also, it's IMHO a good idea to
subscribe to debian-release for anyone running pure sid, so they
can have an overview over currently active transitions.

Regards,
Christian

---

From: "Andrew M.A. Cater" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 18:28:56 +0000

> can have an overview over currently active transitions.

There is a large scale Perl transition going on - up to 400 packages
will be affected - a note's just been posted to the debian-devel
mailing list.

Don't file bugs - do expect some breakage - there is a published
transition plan.

Usual course of affairs for sid and to be expected from time to time:
as Cindy-Sue has already mentioned.

Leave it for a week / ten days and it will settle or update daily
and watch breakage gradually decrease.

IMHO - Including testing will just produce a Frankendebian where you can
never be sure what you have from where and which _will_ burn you
at some point.

All the best,

Andy C

---

From: John Hasler <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 13:37:35 -0500

Christian Seiler wrote:
> it's IMHO a good idea to subscribe to debian-release for anyone
> running pure sid, so they can have an overview over currently active
> transitions.

It's also a good idea to subscribe to debian-devel-announce.  This
transition was announced there, but the announcement unfortunately was
delayed.
-- 
John Hasler 
[email-masked]
Elmwood, WI USA

---

From: Cindy-Sue Causey <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 2016 11:51:53 -0400

> that you can easily request those packages be restored if something goes

I don't always express myself in the best of ways. It just means get
into the very regular habit of backing up *EVERYTHING* in such a way
that, should things ever fail (AND THEY DO), five minutes and a new
hard drive later (for example), you're already back in action.

I write that regularly because both my cognitive [disability] and
financial situation are such that backups didn't/don't occur as they
should. Don't to do what I do. Protect yourself as best you can by
backing up everything that's important very regularly.

How to do so is a personal *_CHOICE_* each user makes. I use rsync but
have seen others have reasonable objections as to why they don't and
why they use other programs successfully. Searching the Debian-User
email archives is one route to go to see what others prefer.

On searching the email archives, there are a couple of us who have
experienced a glitch where we don't get good results by searching
directly through the Debian website. My favored alternative is to
search Debian's archives via a search engine. I enter pertinent
keywords, e.g. "backup", then additionally something like
"lists.debian.org" or "debian-user" into that search engine's query.
Depending on what I need, I'll alternatively type in "wiki.debian.org"
instead.

Cindy :)

* runs with duct tape *