kubuntu-devel Digest, Vol 133, Issue 16 Re: Problem with apt (apt-get) in Kubuntu 16.04 (Matthias Klumpp)

[Paul Loughman]

> On Jan 26, 2016, at 5:09 AM, kubuntu-devel-request at lists.ubuntu.com wrote:
> 
> Message: 8
> Date: Tue, 26 Jan 2016 12:09:37 +0100
> From: Matthias Klumpp <matthias at tenstral.net>
> To: Kubuntu Developer Discussion <kubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com>
> Subject: Re: Problem with apt (apt-get) in Kubuntu 16.04
> Message-ID:
>    <CAKNHny9g2--MGy4D7kuVbW9DWo8cPZj8hRo5vQo8NnhQ0eZmhw at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> 2016-01-26 4:28 GMT+01:00 Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com>:
>>> On Monday, January 25, 2016 07:47:29 PM Paul Loughman wrote:
>>> Executing sudo apt-get dist-upgrade results in a change of ownership of the
>>> /var/cache/apt/archives/partial directory. Below is what it is changed to
>>> after running the command.
>>> 
>>> drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 16384 Jan 25 19:39 .
>>> drwxr-xr-x 4 root root  4096 Jan 25 19:39 ..
>>> drwr??? _apt root  4096 Jan 25 19:36 partial
>>> 
>>> Ownership should not be _apt root. It should remain root root.
>>> 
>>> This behavior is not present prior to Kubuntu 16.04.
>> 
>> I think this is an intentional design change in apt.  I see it on Debian Sid
>> as well.
> 
> Jup, APT is not running network stuff as root anymore, which is a nice
> security enhancement. So the behaviour you are seeing is intended.
> Cheers,
>    Matthias
> ------------------------------

Okay. Thank you for the explanation.

My first impression when I became aware of this, was that something was wrong because an alias I use to list all downloaded packages was failing on the /var/cache/apt/archives/partial directory with:

"ls: cannot open directory /var/cache/apt/archives/partial: Permission denied"

Looking at the contents of /var/cache/apt/archives was when I saw the changed ownership of the partial directory.

So, if this ownership change is intentional as a "security enhancement", when isn't the /var/cache/apt/archives directory also not so changed? It remains owned as root root.

Paul Loughman
 - Sent from my iPad Air