[Bug 1243090] Re: Dist Upgrade from 13.04 to 13.10 stuck during flashplugin-installer

[Bryce Nesbitt]

See also https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/software-
center/+bug/919600

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Title:
  Dist Upgrade from 13.04 to 13.10 stuck during flashplugin-installer

Status in “flashplugin-nonfree” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in “update-notifier” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  When I was upgrading from Ubuntu 13.04 (raring) to Ubuntu 13.10
  (saucy), the installation was stuck for several hours here:

      flashplugin-installer: downloading
  http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/a/adobe-flashplugin/adobe-
  flashplugin_11.2.202.310.orig.tar.gz

  Eventually, due to a system reboot (caused by baby pounding on the
  keyboard), I had to recover from the half-finished upgrade process
  manually.

  It might be an isolated incident, but I am not alone, as seen by this
  user's experience here:

      "13.04 to 13.10 upgrade stalled at flashplugin-installer", posted 2013-10-19:
      http://askubuntu.com/questions/361591/13-04-to-13-10-upgrade-stalled-at-flashplugin-installer

  After I got my system back in order (e.g. sudo dpkg --configure -a;
  purging obsolete/unneeded packages; removing ~/.config/gtk-3.0 to get
  the correct set of system tray icons; adding input methods, etc.), I
  tried "sudo apt-get --reinstall install flashplugin-installer" again:

      Processing triggers for update-notifier-common ...
      flashplugin-installer: downloading http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/a/adobe-flashplugin/adobe-flashplugin_11.2.202.310.orig.tar.gz

  And it got stuck again, with or without proxy.

  I originally suspected that it may have something to do with GFW of
  China, but then a normal "wget
  http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/a/adobe-flashplugin/adobe-
  flashplugin_11.2.202.310.orig.tar.gz", albeit somewhat slow, fetched
  the file just fine, both with direct connection and with proxy.

  Digging deeper, it dawned on me that Ubuntu's flashplugin-installer
  differs from Debian's flashplugin-nonfree, mainly, the Ubuntu-specific
  "update-notifier" and its package-data-downloader Python script is
  used instead of wget for downloading external package data.

  So, I finally found "/usr/share/package-data-downloads/flashplugin-installer",
  and in "/usr/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloader", these relevant lines:

                          print "%s: downloading %s" % (relfile, files[i])
                          dest_file = urllib.urlretrieve(files[i])[0]
                          output = subprocess.check_output(["sha256sum", dest_file])

  Failed to discover the location of the tempfile that
  urllib.urlretrieve() writes to, I fell asleep.

  Today, I decided to file this bug report before my interests die down
  and my memory fails me.  :-)

  As I was typing this, I tried to install flashplugin-installer again,
  and I discovered that urllib.urlretrieve() writes to /tmp/tmpXXXXXX.gz
  (e.g. /tmp/tmpXbszB4.gz) by default, and was able to see the file
  growing in size.

  True to Murphy's Law, despite failing to install flashplugin-installer
  for two days, now I see it installs successfully, as I am finishing
  this bug report!  :-p

  Nevertheless, I think this bug is worth looking into and taking care
  of.  There are at least two such confirmed incidents, and it is such a
  downer when the whole distribution upgrade process got stuck by
  something as "innocuous" as the Adobe Flash Plugin.  :-p

  A few points to look at:

   1.  Are Python's urllib.urlretrieve() and friends able to provide a
  download progress bar of some sort so that the end-user isn't stuck
  wondering whether the download stalled, or just that it is slow?

   2.  From my cable TV 6 Mbps Internet connection in Beijing, depending
  on the time of the day, the download speed
  http://archive.canonical.com/pool/partner/a/adobe-flashplugin/adobe-
  flashplugin_11.2.202.310.orig.tar.gz may get as low as 20KB/s or even
  10KB/s, which translates to 10 to 20 minutes of download for this 13MB
  tarball.  Even without connection timeout or whatnot, the end-user
  cannot help but wonder what is happening.  Debian's older flashplugin-
  nonfree package with wget's progress bar has the definite advantage
  here.

   3.  Does urllib.urlretrieve() and the rest of /usr/lib/update-
  notifier/package-data-downloader handle all kinds of exceptions like
  network error, DNS timeout, download interruption, etc. gracefully?
  Or are there some corner cases where "stalling" would indeed happen?

  Many thanks for looking into this!

  Cheers,
  Anthony Fok

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
  Package: flashplugin-installer 11.2.202.310ubuntu1
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.11.0-12.19-generic 3.11.3
  Uname: Linux 3.11.0-12-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.12.5-0ubuntu2
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Tue Oct 22 15:17:50 2013
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2012-12-11 (314 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Release amd64 (20121017.5)
  MarkForUpload: True
  SourcePackage: flashplugin-nonfree
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to saucy on 2013-10-21 (1 days ago)

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