[Bug 1599646] Re: E-mail report contains repeated "Reading database ... NN%" lines

[Balint Reczey]

Verified with unattended-upgrades/1.1ubuntu1.18.04.7~16.04.2 on Xenial:

https://objectstorage.prodstack4-5.canonical.com/v1/AUTH_77e2ada1e7a84929a74ba3b87153c0ac
/autopkgtest-xenial/xenial/amd64/u/unattended-
upgrades/20190228_150449_11313@/log.gz

...
Packages with upgradable origin but kept back:
 isc-dhcp-client isc-dhcp-common 

Packages that were auto-removed:
 libmircommon5 


Package installation log:
Log started: 2019-02-28  14:34:48
Preparing to unpack .../distro-info-data_0.28ubuntu0.9_all.deb ...
Unpacking distro-info-data (0.28ubuntu0.9) over (0.28) ...
Setting up distro-info-data (0.28ubuntu0.9) ...
Log ended: 2019-02-28  14:34:48

Log started: 2019-02-28  14:34:49
Preparing to unpack .../procps_2%3a3.3.10-4ubuntu2.4_amd64.deb ...
Running in chroot, ignoring request.
Unpacking procps (2:3.3.10-4ubuntu2.4) over (2:3.3.10-4ubuntu2) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.7.5-1) ...
Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-19) ...
Processing triggers for systemd (229-4ubuntu4) ...
Setting up procps (2:3.3.10-4ubuntu2.4) ...
update-rc.d: warning: start and stop actions are no longer supported; falling back to defaults
Log ended: 2019-02-28  14:34:50
...

** Tags removed: verification-needed verification-needed-xenial
** Tags added: verification-done verification-done-xenial

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1599646

Title:
  E-mail report contains repeated "Reading database ... NN%" lines

Status in unattended-upgrades package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
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 Released
Status in apt package in Debian:
  New

Bug description:
  [Impact]

   * Unattended-upgrades sends the following repeating dpkg progress lines with almost no informational value in the email report:
  ...
   (Reading database ...
   (Reading database ... 5%
   (Reading database ... 10%
   (Reading database ... 15%
   (Reading database ... 20%
   (Reading database ... 25%
   (Reading database ... 30%
   (Reading database ... 35%
   (Reading database ... 40%
   (Reading database ... 45%
   (Reading database ... 50%
   (Reading database ... 55%
   (Reading database ... 60%
   (Reading database ... 65%
   (Reading database ... 70%
   (Reading database ... 75%
   (Reading database ... 80%
   (Reading database ... 85%
   (Reading database ... 90%
   (Reading database ... 95%
  (Reading database ... 60486 files and directories currently installed.)
  ...

   * This makes the report email too verbose and makes harder to spot
  real problems.

  [Test Case]

   * Run package autopkgtest and observe no such lines in the echoed
  email in upgrade-all-security and upgrade-between-snapshots tests.

  [Regression Potential]

   * The fix filters dpkg's output only and in the worst case other
  lines could be missing or u-u could crash. Since the applied hard-
  coded regex pattern is fairly simple and we observed no crashes in the
  tests those regressions are unlikey to occur.

  [Originial Bug Text]

  This concerns unattended-upgrades 0.90 in Xenial.

  Here is an excerpt from an e-mail report sent out by u-u after the
  upgrade process is completed:

   Package installation log:
   Log started: 2016-07-06  17:24:21
   Preconfiguring packages ...
   (Reading database ...
   (Reading database ... 5%
   (Reading database ... 10%
   (Reading database ... 15%
   (Reading database ... 20%
   (Reading database ... 25%
   (Reading database ... 30%
   (Reading database ... 35%
   (Reading database ... 40%
   (Reading database ... 45%
   (Reading database ... 50%
   (Reading database ... 55%
   (Reading database ... 60%
   (Reading database ... 65%
   (Reading database ... 70%
   (Reading database ... 75%
   (Reading database ... 80%
   (Reading database ... 85%
   (Reading database ... 90%
   (Reading database ... 95%
   (Reading database ... 100%
   (Reading database ... 314949 files and directories currently installed.)
   Preparing to unpack .../tzdata_2016f-0ubuntu0.16.04_all.deb ...
   Unpacking tzdata (2016f-0ubuntu0.16.04) over (2016d-0ubuntu0.16.04) ...
   Preparing to unpack .../libgimp2.0_2.8.16-1ubuntu1.1_i386.deb ...

  All but the last "Reading database ..." line should be elided from the
  message.

  As a matter of fact, those lines do not appear in messages mailed out
  from current Trusty systems (u-u version 0.82.1ubuntu2.4), so this
  appears to be a regression.

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