[Bug 1254447] Re: Upgrade to 13.30 crashes because of hidden file

[Bram Moolenaar]

% sudo ls -la /etc/apt/sources.list.d
total 28
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 24 20:04 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root 4096 Nov 25 21:09 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  176 Nov 24 20:04 google-chrome.list
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  207 Nov 24 20:03 google-chrome.list~
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  176 Nov 24 13:59 google-chrome.list.distUpgrade
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  209 Nov 24 19:22 google-chrome.list.save
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1714 Nov 24 20:04 .google-chrome.list.un~
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    0 Nov 24 19:22 xorg-edgers-ppa-saucy.list
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    0 Nov 24 19:22 xorg-edgers-ppa-saucy.list.save

In this situation I get the mentioned stack trace.

% sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/.google-chrome.list.un~

Now the stack trace does not happen.
QED.

The undo file was created by reverting the change caused by upgrading,
the Google source line was commented out, using Vim with 'undofile'
enabled.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1254447

Title:
  Upgrade to 13.30 crashes because of hidden file

Status in “ubuntu-release-upgrader” package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  Following the normal procedure to upgrade with the update manager doesn't work.  No error message, just stops working.
  Starting it from the command line: sudo update-manager -d
  Produces a stack trace in the terminal.  The error is: UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf8' codec can't decode byte ...
  This is in function _add_file_to_tar_with_password_check
  (Sorry, didn't copy the whole stack trace; however you should be able to reproduce it from the instructions below).

  The cause was a hidden file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d
  This is a Vim undo file, which has a binary format, thus not utf-8 encoded: .google-chrome.list.un~

  1. First of all, if the updater crashes with a stack trace, a dialog should appear to report the error.
      Pointing to the log file, which I later found out to be /var/log/dist-upgrade/main.log, would be helpful.
     I waited several minutes, thinking that it was busy in the background.

  2. The update must ignore hidden files.  The user may edit files with Vim, which may leave hidden undo files behind.
      A better solution is to only use files that are known to be relevant, not blindly processing every random file.

  3. If the update fails to read a file there should be an option to ignore the error and continue.  Listing the file name and/or contents should give the user a hint about what he is skipping.  This is the only way the upgrade can continue from a damaged system without the user manually hunting around for problems and guessing how to fix them.
  --- 
  ApportVersion: 2.12.5-0ubuntu2.1
  Architecture: i386
  CrashDB: ubuntu
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2012-11-18 (371 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Release i386 (20121017.2)
  MarkForUpload: True
  NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
  Package: ubuntu-release-upgrader (not installed)
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.11.0-13.20-generic 3.11.6
  Tags:  saucy dist-upgrade
  Uname: Linux 3.11.0-13-generic i686
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to saucy on 2013-11-24 (0 days ago)
  UserGroups: adm cdrom dip lpadmin plugdev sambashare sudo
  VarLogDistupgradeAptclonesystemstate.tar.gz: Error: command ['pkexec', 'cat', '/var/log/dist-upgrade/apt-clone_system_state.tar.gz'] failed with exit code 126: Error executing command as another user: Request dismissed
  VarLogDistupgradeTermlog:

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