[Bug 1815494] Re: May remove autoremovable non-kernel packages matching pattern from APT::VersionedKernelPackages

[Łukasz Zemczak]

Hello Balint, or anyone else affected,

Accepted unattended-upgrades into xenial-proposed. The package will
build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source
/unattended-upgrades/1.1ubuntu1.18.04.7~16.04.2 in a few hours, and then
in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package.  See
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how
to enable and use -proposed.  Your feedback will aid us getting this
update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug,
mentioning the version of the package you tested and change the tag from
verification-needed-xenial to verification-done-xenial. If it does not
fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the
tag to verification-failed-xenial. In either case, without details of
your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification .  Thank you in
advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s)
fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in
-proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

** Changed in: unattended-upgrades (Ubuntu Xenial)
       Status: New => Fix Committed

** Tags added: verification-needed-xenial

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1815494

Title:
  May remove autoremovable non-kernel packages matching pattern from
  APT::VersionedKernelPackages

Status in unattended-upgrades package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in update-manager package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in unattended-upgrades source package in Xenial:
  Fix Committed
Status in unattended-upgrades source package in Bionic:
  Fix Committed
Status in unattended-upgrades source package in Cosmic:
  Fix Committed

Bug description:
  [Impact]

  * Non-kernel related autoremovable packages may be removed by unattended-upgrades due to their name matching generic patterns like '.*-modules' which should be applied to versioned kernel packages only.
  * The fix corrects the way those patterns are handled.

  [Test Case]

  * test/test_remove_unused.py checks for correct pattern usage now.

  [Regression Potential]

  * Unattended-upgrades may stop removing autoremovable kernels, but the
  tests also contain cases covering this and u-u's kernel autoremoval
  still works.

  [Original Bug Text]

  Unattended-upgrades and Update Manager use the patterns from the
  APT::VersionedKernelPackages list directly for finding kernel packages
  to remove while APT uses patterns by attaching version and flavor to
  them.

  As a result in APT's script ".*-modules" becomes
  "^.*-modules-4\.15\.0-45-generic$":

  ...
          for package in $(apt-config dump --no-empty --format '%v%n' 'APT::VersionedKernelPackages'); do
                  for kernel in $kernels; do
                          echo "   \"^${package}-${kernel}$\";"
    done
  ...

  In unattended-upgrades and update-manager ".*-modules" is used
  directly for matching and may false  identify autoremovable packages
  as kernel-related ones and remove them (of just offer the removal in
  case of update-manager):

  ...
  Removing unused kernel packages: extra-cmake-modules
  marking extra-cmake-modules for removal
  (Reading database ... 31149 files and directories currently installed.)
  Removing extra-cmake-modules (5.44.0-0ubuntu1) ...
  Processing triggers for man-db (2.8.3-2ubuntu0.1) ...
  Packages that were successfully auto-removed: extra-cmake-modules
  ...

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