Lack of change description on update-manager (reloaded)

[Carlos Ribeiro]

On 10/17/06, t u <towsonu2003 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> there are at least two bugs on this:
> <...>
> bug in general:
> https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/update-manager/+bug/40058
>
> unfortunately, this happens all too often. I would like to +1 Ribeiro's
> call.
>

I'm raising this once again, because it's still an issue for me. I'm using
Dapper, a LTS release, and was notified about updated packages a couple days
ago. I waited a few days to make sure that changelog could be properly
propagated to changelogs.ubuntu.com, but its still not working as it should.
I've noticed something strange - even packages that have changelog info on
the server report blank info on update-manager.

This is the output of "apt-get -s dist-upgrade" as of today (2006-11-05):

cribeiro at shrek:~$ sudo apt-get -s dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  linux-image-2.6.15-27-386 linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-27-386
The following packages have been kept back:
  flashplugin-nonfree
The following packages will be upgraded:
  libimlib2 librpm4 linux-restricted-modules-common nvidia-glx rpm
5 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Inst libimlib2 [1.2.1-2] (1.2.1-2ubuntu0.1 Ubuntu:6.06/dapper-security)
Inst librpm4 [4.4.1-5ubuntu2] (4.4.1-5ubuntu2.1 Ubuntu:6.06/dapper-security)
Inst linux-image-2.6.15-27-386 (2.6.15-27.48 Ubuntu:6.06/dapper-security)
Inst linux-restricted-modules-common [2.6.15.11-5] (2.6.15.12-1 Ubuntu:6.06
/dapper-security)
Inst linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-27-386 (2.6.15.12-1 Ubuntu:6.06
/dapper-security)
Inst nvidia-glx [1.0.8762+2.6.15.11-5] (1.0.8776+2.6.15.12-1 Ubuntu:6.06
/dapper-security)
Inst rpm [4.4.1-5ubuntu2] (4.4.1-5ubuntu2.1 Ubuntu:6.06/dapper-security)
Conf libimlib2 (1.2.1-2ubuntu0.1 Ubuntu:6.06/dapper-security)
Conf librpm4 (4.4.1-5ubuntu2.1 Ubuntu:6.06/dapper-security)
Conf linux-image-2.6.15-27-386 (2.6.15-27.48 Ubuntu:6.06/dapper-security)
Conf linux-restricted-modules-common (2.6.15.12-1 Ubuntu:6.06
/dapper-security)
Conf linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-27-386 (2.6.15.12-1 Ubuntu:6.06
/dapper-security)
Conf nvidia-glx (1.0.8776+2.6.15.12-1 Ubuntu:6.06/dapper-security)
Conf rpm (4.4.1-5ubuntu2.1 Ubuntu:6.06/dapper-security)

On update-manager, I checked the changelog info for the packages above. Only
two have up-to-date changelog information, one has some info that does not
match the last version, and for all the others no changelog info is shown:

nvidia-glx:
  - OK
linux-image-2.6.15-27-386:
  - OK
linux-restricted-modules-2.6.15-27-386:
  - Change log info is identical to nvidia-glx, but version number does not
match;
  - Package is 2.6.15.12-1
  - Changelog refers to 2.6.15.11-1 (which is the release number for
nvidia-glx)
libimlib2:
  - No changelog info
librpm4:
  - No changelog info
linux-restricted-modules-common:
  - No changelog info
rpm :
  - No changelog info

I've traced the network activity to check what update-manager was doing. I
used tcpdump because it was more convenient for me (no need to setup a
proxy, etc.). This is the (heavily edited) trace for rpm_4.4.1-5ubuntu2:

1) Connect to www.rookery.ubuntu.com

2) GET /changelogs/pool/main/r/rpm/rpm_4.4.1-5ubuntu2/changelog HTTP/1.1

3) Answer from the web server:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2006 14:45:14 GMT
Server: Apache/2.0.55 (Ubuntu)
Last-Modified: Tue, 17 Jan 2006 16:34:28 GMT
ETag: "a98449-8e23-81514d00"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 36387
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

rpm (4.4.1-5ubuntu2) dapper; urgency=low

  * debian/control:
    - Build against libneon25, 24 does not exist any more.
    - Add build dependency libsepol1-dev.
  * debian/rules: Link lsb-rpm against -lsepol to fix unresolved references
    and FTBFS.

 -- Martin Pitt <martin.pitt at ubuntu.com>  Tue, 17 Jan 2006 12:20:31 +0100

rpm (4.4.1-5ubuntu1) dapper; urgency=low

  * Build using python2.4.

 -- Matthias Klose <doko at ubuntu.com>  Mon, 16 Jan 2006 20:55:25 +0000
<...>

Unless I am mistaken, the update info *is* there, but it did not show up on
update manager. I don't know about update-manager internals; as a wild
guess, it seems that there's something wrong with the parsing of the
changelog info.

Now, I don't know if this is the same bug as #40058; again, I guess it's
something different but with the same effect. I'm waiting for some feedback
on whether to report this on the existing bug or to open a new bug.

For a LTS release, and thinking about enterprise users, this is a serious
issue. I'm a home user and I trust Ubuntu community & Canonical enough to
just install whatever update-manager tells me to (and yes, I know there's
some risk in this behavior!). But this is clearly not what is supposed to
happen, *specially* for a LTS release.

-- 
Carlos Ribeiro
Consultoria em Projetos
blog: http://rascunhosrotos.blogspot.com
blog: http://pythonnotes.blogspot.com
mail: carribeiro at gmail.com
mail: carribeiro at yahoo.com
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