Re: [lmi] "buster" updates

[Greg Chicares]

On 2018-04-07 11:51, Vadim Zeitlin wrote:
> On Fri, 6 Apr 2018 21:48:52 +0000 Greg Chicares <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> GC> Facing a large backlog of work on a Friday afternoon, I thought I'd just
> GC> upgrade my "buster" chroot, because what could go wrong?
> 
>  Indeed, this is my usual approach to updating Debian systems. So far it
> has never been a problem.
> 
> GC> First of all, the cross compiler got upgraded,
> 
>  Which was the reason I hadn't upgraded my own Buster chroot so far, I
> wanted to keep using the same compiler version as is used under native MSW.
> 
>  BTW, I don't know if it was a surprise,

Somewhat. I had never before seen the MinGW-w64 package get updated in
a chroot. This time, I saw that an update was "held back" when I did
  apt-get upgrade
but I nonchalantly assumed that the update might bring gcc-7.2.0
closer to upstream native gcc-7.2.0, so I did
  apt-get dist-upgrade
and only then did I notice that it was 7.3.0 .

> but, just in case, you can always
> use "apt-cache policy gcc-mingw-w64-i686" to view the available version(s)
> of the package (after doing "apt update" to ensure that the information
> about the packages is up-to-date).

# apt update    
Hit:1 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster InRelease
Hit:2 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates InRelease
Hit:3 http://security.debian.org buster/updates InRelease              
Reading package lists... Done                                          
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
5 packages can be upgraded. Run 'apt list --upgradable' to see them.

# apt-cache policy gcc-mingw-w64-i686
gcc-mingw-w64-i686:
  Installed: 7.3.0-12+20.2+b1
  Candidate: 7.3.0-12+20.2+b1
  Version table:
 *** 7.3.0-12+20.2+b1 500
        500 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

I guess that answers the question I was going to answer next: whether
the 'apt' system offers an easy way to revert to the old 7.2.0 if I
need that. Apparently it doesn't.

> In the past, I also used aptitude for
> upgrades, as you had a nice option of pressing "v" when it asked you
> whether you wanted to continue, which showed the versions of the old and
> the (proposed) new packages, but these days using aptitude seems to be
> frown upon, for whatever reason.

'apt', 'apt-get', 'aptitude': I just use 'apt-get' normally because
that seems to be the most popular.

> GC> But first, since I'm logged in as root, I thought I'd install a couple
> GC> of shell-script checkers: 'shellcheck', which was easy to install and
> GC> is useful...and 'checkbashisms', which is part of 'devscripts', which
> GC> is large, but, again, what could possibly go wrong?
> GC> 
> GC> update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/frm.mailutils to provide /usr/bin/frm 
> (frm) in auto moW: APT had planned for dpkg to do more than it reported back 
> (934 vs 1051).
[...]
>  Interesting... which package does /usr/bin/frm come from? I don't see it
> in the list of files of devscripts package at
> 
>       https://packages.debian.org/buster/i386/devscripts/filelist
> 
> and searching for it doesn't find anything neither:
> 
> https://packages.debian.org/search?searchon=contents&keywords=/usr/bin/frm&mode=path&suite=testing&arch=any

# ls /usr/bin/frm*
/usr/bin/frm  /usr/bin/frm.mailutils
# apt-cache rdepends --installed mailutils
mailutils
Reverse Depends:

Nothing. So maybe I don't need it? Let's try this:

# apt-cache rdepends mailutils          
mailutils
Reverse Depends:
  s-nail
 |wims
  smartmontools
  maildir-utils
 |rkhunter
  psad
  mailutils-mh
  maildir-utils
  backupninja
 |fwanalog
 |debarchiver

I wonder whether 'devscripts' brought in 'debarchiver'.

Let's try a different way:

# apt -s remove mailutils                 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  guile-2.0-libs libgc1c2 libgsasl7 libkyotocabinet16v5 liblzo2-2 libmailutils5
  libmariadbclient18 libntlm0 libpython2.7 libpython2.7-minimal 
libpython2.7-stdlib
  mailutils-common mysql-common
Use 'apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  mailutils
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 5 not upgraded.
Remv mailutils [1:3.4-1]
# apt autoremove
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 5 not upgraded.

Trying something else:

# zcat -f /var/log/dpkg.log* | grep "\ install\ " | grep -i mailutils
2018-04-06 20:02:15 install mailutils-common:all <none> 1:3.4-1
2018-04-06 20:02:17 install libmailutils5:amd64 <none> 1:3.4-1
2018-04-06 20:02:24 install mailutils:amd64 <none> 1:3.4-1

Twenty hours ago--probably when I installed 'devscripts'.

Let's see if I can get 'autoremove' to remove it, thus:

apt-mark auto mailutils      
mailutils was already set to automatically installed.

'deborphan' and 'debfoster' don't seem to help:

# deborphan --guess-all    
libxslt1-dev:amd64

No, I think I want that.

Finally I just did this:
  apt-get remove mailutils
and let 'autoremove' get rid of its dependencies.