Certain characters (e.g. ':') in package version numbers cause Dpkg provider to install things repeatedly.

Details

  • Type: Bug Bug
  • Status: Open Open
  • Priority: Major Major
  • Resolution: Unresolved
  • Affects Version/s: None
  • Fix Version/s: None
  • Component/s: Chef Client
  • Labels:
    None
  • Environment:

    Any Debian environment or environment using Debian packages.

Description

The package in question is for the Zabbix monitoring agent (which isn't in a repository, so must be installed from package) and it has an "odd" version number:

$ dpkg-deb -W /tmp/zabbix-agent_1.8.3-2_amd64.deb
zabbix-agent 1:1.8.3-2

This is the regular expression currently used by Chef::Provider::Package::Dpkg to parse this output:

/([a-z\d\-\+]+)\t([\w\d.-]+)/

which results in the version always appearing to be "1" because the colon is not accepted. Since 1 != 1:1.8.3-2, a reinstall happens every time. This can easily be fixed by adding a colon to the list of acceptable characters:

/([a-z\d\-\+]+)\t([\w\d.:-]+)/
^

This bug still seems to exist in the current git version...

Activity

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Eric Herot added a comment -

https://github.com/eherot/chef/tree/CHEF-1072

Added a colon to the list of allowable characters in a file version string (many Debian packages contain colons in their versions).

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Eric Herot added a comment - https://github.com/eherot/chef/tree/CHEF-1072 Added a colon to the list of allowable characters in a file version string (many Debian packages contain colons in their versions).
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Michael MacDonald added a comment -

I don't think this made it into master... Apologies for re-opening if I'm wrong, but I don't see this fix in git master as of 2011/02/15. Adding a colon to the regex is necessary to match packages with an epoch in the version field: http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#s-f-Version

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Michael MacDonald added a comment - I don't think this made it into master... Apologies for re-opening if I'm wrong, but I don't see this fix in git master as of 2011/02/15. Adding a colon to the regex is necessary to match packages with an epoch in the version field: http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#s-f-Version
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Eric Herot added a comment -

This test is also failing for the package called libssl0.9.8 because it doesn't allow the '.' character to be before the tab in the match result.

This leads me to wonder: Why do we try to match any numbers at all in the first part of the result? It seems like we're trying to outsmart the package manager here with very poor results. I would go so far as to say that perhaps instead of having this:

DPKG_INFO = /([a-z\d\-\+]+)\t([\w\d.-]+)/

which breaks the "libssl0.9.8[TAB]0.9.8o-5" up into two strings: "8" and "0.9.8o-5"

we should have this

DPKG_INFO = /(.+)\t([\w\d.-]+)/

which breaks into "libssl0.9.8" and "0.9.8o-5"

Can anyone think of a reason why this wouldn't work?

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Eric Herot added a comment - This test is also failing for the package called libssl0.9.8 because it doesn't allow the '.' character to be before the tab in the match result. This leads me to wonder: Why do we try to match any numbers at all in the first part of the result? It seems like we're trying to outsmart the package manager here with very poor results. I would go so far as to say that perhaps instead of having this: DPKG_INFO = /( [a-z\d\-\+] +)\t( [\w\d.-] +)/ which breaks the "libssl0.9.8 [TAB] 0.9.8o-5" up into two strings: "8" and "0.9.8o-5" we should have this DPKG_INFO = /(.+)\t( [\w\d.-] +)/ which breaks into "libssl0.9.8" and "0.9.8o-5" Can anyone think of a reason why this wouldn't work?
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Michael MacDonald added a comment -

Any possibility the fix for ':' in the version might land in the next release? It's quite trivial and low-risk. I've been patching my installations, but it'd be nice to get this landed upstream.

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Michael MacDonald added a comment - Any possibility the fix for ':' in the version might land in the next release? It's quite trivial and low-risk. I've been patching my installations, but it'd be nice to get this landed upstream.

People

  • Assignee:
    Adam Jacob
    Reporter:
    Eric Herot
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Dates

  • Created:
    Updated: