[Bug 920903] [NEW] Aptitude does not show reliably if a package is installed

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I have set up a new "oneiric" system (in a virtual machine) with
architecture x86-64 from a minimal image ("net install"), installed some
additional software, and installed all patches.

I have to mention that I did not select a predefined installation set
(like "desktop", "server", "developer" etc.), but did the minimal
install and then installed package by package what I needed, always
using no other command than aptitude, and of course always following the
recommends.

After some weeks, I was wondering why saslauthd had been installed; so I
used apt-file to investigate. apt-file showed me that saslauthd belongs
to package sasl2-bin. Therefore I was looking for all sasl packages
being installed with the following commands and results:

root at baldur:~# aptitude search sasl
p   cyrus-sasl2-dbg                                     - Cyrus SASL - debugging symbols
p   cyrus-sasl2-doc                                     - Cyrus SASL - documentation
p   cyrus-sasl2-heimdal-dbg                             - Cyrus SASL - debugging symbols for Heimdal modules
p   cyrus-sasl2-mit-dbg                                 - Cyrus SASL - debugging symbols for MIT modules
p   gsasl                                               - GNU SASL command line utility
p   gsasl-dbg                                           - GNU SASL debugging symbols
p   libapache2-mod-authn-sasl                           - SASL authentication backend provider for Apache
p   libauthen-sasl-cyrus-perl                           - Perl extension for Cyrus SASL library
p   libauthen-sasl-perl                                 - Authen::SASL - SASL Authentication framework
p   libgsasl7                                           - GNU SASL library
p   libgsasl7-dev                                       - Development files for the GNU SASL library
p   liblua5.1-cyrussasl-dev                             - Cyrus SASL development files for the Lua language version 5.1
p   liblua5.1-cyrussasl0                                - Cyrus SASL library for the Lua language version 5.1
p   libqca2-plugin-cyrus-sasl                           - QCA Cyrus SASL plugin for libqca2
i   libsasl2-2                                          - Cyrus SASL - authentication abstraction library
p   libsasl2-dev                                        - Cyrus SASL - development files for authentication abstraction
i   libsasl2-modules                                    - Cyrus SASL - pluggable authentication modules
p   libsasl2-modules-gssapi-heimdal                     - Pluggable Authentication Modules for SASL (GSSAPI)
p   libsasl2-modules-gssapi-mit                         - Cyrus SASL - pluggable authentication modules (GSSAPI)
p   libsasl2-modules-ldap                               - Cyrus SASL - pluggable authentication modules (LDAP)
p   libsasl2-modules-otp                                - Cyrus SASL - pluggable authentication modules (OTP)
p   libsasl2-modules-sql                                - Cyrus SASL - pluggable authentication modules (SQL)
p   php-auth-sasl                                       - Abstraction of various SASL mechanism responses
p   php5-sasl                                           - Cyrus SASL extension for PHP 5
p   sasl2-bin                                           - Cyrus SASL - administration programs for SASL users database
root at baldur:~#

Note that sasl2-bin is shown as being NOT installed.

Wondering about that, I checked again by doing the following and got
another result:

root at baldur:~# aptitude search sasl2-bin
i   sasl2-bin                                           - Cyrus SASL - administration programs for SASL users database
root at baldur:~#

In other words, "aptitude search sasl" tells that sasl2-bin is not
installed, and "aptitude search sasl2-bin" tells that sasl2-bin is
installed.

This is somehow frustrating, isn't it? Even worse, it may lead to
serious consequences if the package maintaining utilities think a
package is not installed although it is, or vice versa. I don't know if
it's just bug in aptitude's output, or if aptitude under certain
circumstances really thinks that the package in question isn't
installed.

Since I am not an expert regarding apt and the package maintenance
system, please tell me if you need further information to reproduce the
problem.

Regards,

Binarus

** Affects: aptitude (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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Aptitude does not show reliably if a package is installed
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/920903
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