[EN] Upgrade broken: base-files installation fails due to alledgedly unmet usrmerge

[brom]

Hi people,

I'm a long (and till today quiet) siduction user and everything worked like a charm till today - but now I've got a situation I'm not able to solve:

Trying a apt dist-upgrade fails with the following message:

Code: [Select]

root@tightan-siduction:/# apt dist-upgrade
...
Summary:
  Upgrading: 902, Installing: 104, Removing: 2, Not Upgrading: 0
  Download size: 0 B / 1.693 MB
  Space needed: 1.421 MB / 34,4 GB available

Continue? [J/n]
Extracting templates from packages: 100%
Preconfiguring packages ...
setting xserver-xorg-legacy/xwrapper/allowed_users from configuration file
(Lese Datenbank ... 296598 Dateien und Verzeichnisse sind derzeit installiert.)
Vorbereitung zum Entpacken von .../base-files_13.5_amd64.deb ...


******************************************************************************
*
* The base-files package cannot be installed because
* /bin is a symbolic link and not pointing at usr/bin exactly.
*
* This is an unexpected situation. Cannot proceed with the upgrade.
*
* For more information please read https://wiki.debian.org/UsrMerge.
*
******************************************************************************


dpkg: Fehler beim Bearbeiten des Archivs /var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_13.5_amd64.deb (--unpack):
 »neues pre-installation-Skript des Paketes base-files«-Unterprozess gab den Fehlerwert 1 zurück
Fehler traten auf beim Bearbeiten von:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_13.5_amd64.deb
needrestart is being skipped since dpkg has failed
Error: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

But after reading the linked wiki and looking at the filesystem, see:

Code: [Select]

root@tightan-siduction:/# ls -lah /
insgesamt 76K
drwxr-xr-x  19 root root 4,0K  9. Sep 21:43 .
drwxr-xr-x  19 root root 4,0K  9. Sep 21:43 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 root root    0  5. Jun 2021  .autorelabel
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    8  5. Jun 2021  bin -> /usr/bin
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root 4,0K 14. Aug 06:51 boot
drwxr-xr-x  19 root root 4,4K 16. Sep 17:53 dev
drwxr-xr-x  10 root root 4,0K  5. Jun 2021  disks
drwxr-xr-x 168 root root  12K 16. Sep 17:53 etc
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root 4,0K 17. Aug 2021  home
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   40 14. Aug 06:51 initrd.img -> boot/initrd.img-6.10.4-1-siduction-amd64
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   40 14. Aug 06:51 initrd.img.old -> boot/initrd.img-6.10.2-1-siduction-amd64
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    8  5. Jun 2021  lib -> /usr/lib
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   10  5. Jun 2021  lib64 -> /usr/lib64
drwx------   2 root root  16K  5. Jun 2021  lost+found
drwxr-xr-x  15 root root 4,0K  9. Sep 20:59 media
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4,0K 14. Feb 2021  mnt
drwxr-xr-x   4 root root 4,0K 27. Feb 2023  opt
dr-xr-xr-x 505 root root    0 16. Sep 19:53 proc
drwx------  10 root root 4,0K 16. Sep 19:54 root
drwxr-xr-x  37 root root 1,1K 16. Sep 19:55 run
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    9  5. Jun 2021  sbin -> /usr/sbin
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4,0K 14. Feb 2021  srv
dr-xr-xr-x  12 root root    0 16. Sep 20:13 sys
drwxrwxrwt  19 root root  480 16. Sep 20:26 tmp
drwxr-xr-x  12 root root 4,0K  3. Sep 2023  usr
drwxr-xr-x  11 root root 4,0K 28. Nov 2023  var
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   37 14. Aug 06:51 vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-6.10.4-1-siduction-amd64
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   37 14. Aug 06:51 vmlinuz.old -> boot/vmlinuz-6.10.2-1-siduction-amd64
I don't really understand what apt is trying to tell me - any help is highly appreciated! I can happily provide further details if requested and can also answer in German, if that's preferred...

Thanks in advance
Brom

[ReinerS]

Not new issue, but not solved yet.
Overcoming it here by putting base-files 13.3 on hold for now.

regards

Reiner

[dibl]

I don't understand the problem (except that 902 files to be upgraded suggests a LONG time since the last upgrade ....)

Several siduction systems here, all fully upgraded -- here is one:

Code: [Select]

[sudo] password for don:
base-files:
  Installed: 13.5
  Candidate: 13.5
  Version table:
 *** 13.5 500
        500 https://deb.debian.org/debian unstable/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[ReinerS]

@dibl:
I also have it on my laptop. On my big Box no problem, even at 13. installed
It was described already here:
https://forum.siduction.org/index.php?topic=9420.msg75025#msg75025

Maybe I will give it a new try on my laptop.

Regards

Reiner

[michaa7]

Jetzt muß ich aber schon mal fragen: Ist towos Info angekommen und erkannt worden?

https://forum.siduction.org/index.php?topic=9420.msg75008#msg75008

Es ging um den führenden "/" der *zuviel* ist!

Funktionierend:  /bin -> usr/bin
Nicht funktionierend:  /bin -> /usr/bin

Das gilt analog für:  lib -> usr/lib, lib64 -> usr/lib64, sbin -> usr/sbin



Short in EN:

Did you understand towos suggestion? It's all about the leading "/"!

Working:  /bin -> usr/bin
Not working:  /bin -> /usr/bin

The same goes for: :  lib -> usr/lib, lib64 -> usr/lib64, sbin -> usr/sbin

@  brom: You have all those links with leading "/", which seams to be wrong.


And for whoever has difficulties to change the link:
https://javarevisited.blogspot.com/2011/04/symbolic-link-or-symlink-in-unix-linux.html
But I assume it has to be done as root, not $.

Not testet because here all is woring as it should.

[brom]

Thank you very much for the detailed help, will try to fix my system tomorrow, should be a piece of cake…

[ReinerS]

@michaa7
Eigentlich lese ich nur, dass das bei Towo und Anderen (auch bei einem meiner Rechner) anders ist. Warum und wieso ist mir nach wie vor unklar.
Und ich habs, wie vielleicht Andere auch, nicht sooo eilig an gravierenden Systemeinstellungen manuell rum zu fummeln, ohne wirklich genau zu wissen was die Ursache des Problems ist/war bzw. wieso und warum ich das tue und ob es dann vielleicht doch gravierende Folgen haben könnte oder vielleicht eine Behebung der Probleme durch ein upgedatetes Paket verhindert.

Grüße

Reiner

Well, the only thing i read/know for now is that this is different on Towos and others boxes (On one of mine too).  Why and how this happened ist still absolutely unclear to me.
 And I am usually not too keen to fumble manually on existential system-parameters without knowing the initial cause of the problem and the exact reasons why I should do so whitout knowing wether doing so could have severe consequences on the system later on or prevents the implementation of fixes for this package later on.

Regards

Reiner

[michaa7]

It would be very interessing to hear from *one single person* for whom the leading "/" is working with the directories inquestion on an fully up to date system.

"man ln" states that the path is resolved relatively to the parent directory of the link. This to me seems to be the explanation way the leading "/" must not exist. Because that makes the path absolut, not relative.

An other question is: Where does the wrong path come from?

[ReinerS]

@Michaaa7:
Well, that is imho not really the point. Would be nice to know when exactly and how this happened/had been caused.
Actually the laptop in question here runs perfectly with 15.3, so what was changed causing that and why other systems (with the same update-level) had/are not involved with this problem.

Regards

Reiner

[unklarer]

Hi, ReinerS

es geht um das(was du eh schon weißt): https://linuxnews.de/debian-usrmerge-kommt-endlich-voran/

Was mich an der gesamten Geschichte eigentlich aufregt, ist, dass hier keiner der veranrwortlichen Leute, von @devil bis @towo
mal sagt, was Sache ist. Stattdessen wurschtelt man selbst, weil das Problem weiterhin besteht.
Mir wäre auch genug, wenn zur Auskunft käme, 'wir wissen es auch nicht', abwarten!

Und, weil hier eben nichts kommt, wechselt das Thema in's Nachbar-Forum:  https://debianforum.de/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1371184&sid=3c1fb3ecd27a9657e75aad2b8c6694d5#p1371178

---------------

it's about this (which you already know anyway):

What really upsets me about the whole story is that none of the people responsible, from @devil to @towo
is saying what's going on.

Instead, they are muddling along themselves because the problem persists.
It would be enough for me if the answer was 'we don't know either', wait and see!

And because nothing comes here, the topic moves to the neighboring forum:

[towo]

Und was sollte ich oder devil dazu sagen?
usrmerge ist aus debian, da haben wir genau nichts damit zu tun gehabt.

[brom]

After fixing the four symlinks upgrade of base-files works

If anyone else wants to try:

Code: [Select]

su -
cd /
ln -nsf usr/bin bin
ln -nsf usr/sbin sbin
ln -nsf usr/lib lib
ln -nsf usr/lib64 lib64


[michaa7]

Glad it works now.

But I'd suggest:

su -
cd /
ln -nsf usr/bin /bin
ln -nsf usr/sbin /sbin
ln -nsf usr/lib /lib
ln -nsf usr/lib64 /lib64

for clarity. The "/bin" part you want to be an absolute path, the "usr/bin" has to be relative.

[ReinerS]

Here a /lib32 was also involved and had to be changed.
changed all those paths/links, hop it causes no problem on later updates. 

regards

Reiner