[Bug 13130] Re: Debconf uninitialized variable

[soletan]

in addition: running "sudo dpkg --configure -a" as proposed after
relogin succeeded apparently.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/13130

Title:
  Debconf uninitialized variable

Status in “debconf” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  I get the following when installing/removing packages:

  Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at
  /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Format/822.pm line 57, <$__ANONIO__> line 1.
  Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at
  /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Format/822.pm line 57, <$__ANONIO__> line 4.
  Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at
  /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Format/822.pm line 57, <$__ANONIO__> line 5.
  Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at
  /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/Format/822.pm line 57, <$__ANONIO__> line 6.
  Use of uninitialized value in hash element at
  /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/DbDriver/File.pm line 51, <$__ANONIO__> chunk 15.

  I'm no expert but it seems to be related to the following bit of code
  in 822.pm:

  my $invars=0;
  my $line;
  while ($line = <$fh>) {
          chomp $line;
          last if $line eq ''; # blank line is our record delimiter
          if ($invars) {
                  if ($line =~ /^\s/) {
                          $line =~ s/^\s+//;
                          my ($var, $value)=split(/\s*=\s?/, $line, 2);
                          $value=~s/\\n/\n/g;
                          $ret{variables}->{$var}=$value;
                          next;
                  }
                  else {
                          $invars=0;
                  }
          }
          ... blah, blah, blah ...
  }

  IIRC $invars=0 will cause it to evaluate to boolean false, in which case it will
  get set to 0 again which makes no sense. Because $invars is set to 0 this means
  that the first code block of the if statement gets skipped and $value doesn't
  get set which leads to an error when we get to:

  elsif (length $key) {
          $value=~s/\\n/\n/g;
          $ret{fields}->{$key}=$value;
  }

  So it looks to my untrained eye as if $invars should initially be set
  to 1.

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