clone 339541 -1
reassign -1 ucf
retitle -1 ucf takes not enough care using readlink -f
tags -1 + patch
reassign 339541 gnus
retitle 339541 gnus should clean up old absurd /etc site-start.d link
thanks
I have this bug too. I have investigated and conclude that it is
caused as follows:
* On my system, which was installed as Debian 0.93R5 and has never
been reinstalled, /etc/xemacs21/site-start.d/20gnus-init.el was
(until I just fixed it by hand) a symlink to
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnus/gnus-init.el. I assume this must
have been done by some older gnus package since I wouldn't do
anything so silly.
The current gnus package should be made to try to fix this up. The
best thing is probably to try to look only for the specific
erroneous link (eg, compare the output of readlink with the fixed
target filename) and remove the link if it exists. I would be very
happy to review and comment on the proposed patch.
Removing the link and rerunning the failed install (dpkg
--configure --pending or choose your own rune) fixed it.
* /usr/lib/emacsen-common/packages/install/gnus uses `ucf';
in particular it runs
ucf /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/gnus/lisp/gnus-init.el \
/etc/xemacs21/site-start.d/20gnus-init.el
ucf is a shell script with set -e and does this
readlink -nf $dest_file
but, as the documentation for readlink says, use of the -f flag can
cause readlink to silently exit nonzero. The code should
probably be changed to
readlink -nf $dest_file || :
since readlink also signals this error by printing no output
and then the subsequent diagnostic will appear. This would have
resulted in the emacs install failing with the message
/etc/xemacs21/site-start.d/20gnus-init.el is a broken symlink!
and would have saved us some chasing about.
I have to say that this bug report seems to show a number of people
flailing around without attempting anything resembling sane debugging
techniques. With the proper use of set -x and/or strace this bug
wasn't too hard to track down even though it was something of a wild
goose chase.
Ian.
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