broken in upgrades: fvwm & tetex-bin

[Michael Paoli]

broken in upgrades: fvwm & tetex-bin

rats ...

A) I quite recently applied a fair bunch of updates[1] (mostly security,
and some tracking of sarge package versions) ... and ended up with a
broken fvwm[2] ...  rather annoying, since that's the window manager I
primarily use.

B) A fair bit earlier, with similar updates[3] on tetex-bin, I ended up
with a broken tetex-bin[4], on one of my two home Debian systems.

It's quite nice that the vast majority of updates don't seem to cause   
any breakage, ... but it is annoying to hit those relatively rare
exceptions where something does break.

Anyway, both systems are mostly woody, with a spattering of sarge.  One
of them has a trace of some pre-woody packages.  All of them are in and
maintained in consistent dependency states (so apt-get, etc. are happy
and all that).  Both get updates fairly regularly - mostly updates and
security updates to stable, and commonly also updated versions of those
packages installed from testing.

Footnotes:

1.
2004-12-27
upgraded imlib-base version 1.9.14-2wody1 to version 1.9.14-2woody2
upgraded nfs-common version 1:1.0-2woody1 to version 1.0-2woody3
upgraded po-debconf version 0.8.14 to version 0.8.15
upgraded dialog version 1.0-20040920-1 to version 1.0-20041118-1
upgraded xfree86-common version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded ethereal-common version 0.9.4-1woody8 to version 0.9.4-1woody9
upgraded libtiff3g version 3.5.5-6woody1 to version 3.5.5-6.woody3
upgraded htget version 0.93-1.1 to version 0.93-1.1woody1
upgraded libbluetooth1 version 2.10-1 to version 2.11-1
upgraded libdps1 version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded libtiff-tools version 3.5.5-6woody1 to version 3.5.5-6.woody3
upgraded xutils version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xfonts-base version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xfonts-100dpi version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xfonts-75dpi version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xfonts-scalable version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xprt version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xspecs version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xvfb version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xfonts-100dpi-transcoded version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xfonts-75dpi-transcoded version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xfonts-base-transcoded version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded telnet-ssl version 0.17.17+0.1-2woody2 to version 0.17.17+0.1-2woody3
upgraded xlibs version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xlibs-dev version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded ethereal version 0.9.4-1woody8 to version 0.9.4-1woody9
upgraded gdk-imlib1 version 1.9.14-2wody1 to version 1.9.14-2woody2
upgraded imlib1 version 1.9.14-2wody1 to version 1.9.14-2woody2
upgraded lbxproxy version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded libxaw6 version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded libxaw7 version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded proxymngr version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded twm version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xfwp version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xlib6g version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded debconf-english version 1.4.30.10 to version 1.4.30.11
upgraded debconf version 1.4.30.10 to version 1.4.30.11
upgraded nfs-kernel-server version 1:1.0-2woody1 to version 1.0-2woody3
upgraded debconf-utils version 1.4.30.10 to version 1.4.30.11
upgraded debhelper version 4.2.24 to version 4.2.28
upgraded xserver-common version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xserver-xfree86 version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xlibmesa3 version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xbase-clients version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded x-window-system-core version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xdm version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xfs version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xnest version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded xterm version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5
upgraded x-window-system version 4.1.0-16woody4 to version 4.1.0-16woody5

2.
X11 works, at least most other window managers (KDE, GNOME, mwm, twm, at
least) work, but fvwm fails.  Seems it's probably a bug in fvwm itself  
(or a dependent library?), but was likely triggered by some other
change.  I haven't researched the problem a whole lot at this point, but
these are some additional bits of data:
stderr of fvwm gives:
[FVWM][GetFontSetOrFixed]: WARNING -- can't get fontset 'fixed', trying
'-*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-*-*'
xfontsel seems to indicate that
-*-fixed-medium-r-normal-*-14-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
exists
an
strace -fv -eall -s2048
on fvwm ends with:
2992  read(3,
"\1\24\356\1\0\0\0\0\377\377\377\377\377\377\0\0\377\377\377\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\260\216\213\10",
32) = 32
2992  --- SIGSEGV (Segmentation fault) ---
2992  +++ killed by SIGSEGV +++
... and that (2992) is on the fvwm process (PID) itself (no other exec or fork)

3.
2004-12-03
upgraded zlib1g version 1:1.2.2-1 to version 1.2.2-3
upgraded libmagick5 version 4:5.4.4.5-1woody3 to version 5.4.4.5-1woody4
upgraded imagemagick version 4:5.4.4.5-1woody3 to version 5.4.4.5-1woody4
upgraded libkpathsea3 version 1.0.7+20011202-7.1 to version 1.0.7+20011202-7.3
upgraded tetex-bin version 1.0.7+20011202-7.1 to version 1.0.7+20011202-7.3
upgraded libssl0.9.6 version 0.9.6c-2.woody.6 to version 0.9.6c-2.woody.7
upgraded libssl-dev version 0.9.6c-2.woody.6 to version 0.9.6c-2.woody.7
upgraded apache-common version 1.3.26-0woody5 to version 1.3.26-0woody6
upgraded apache-doc version 1.3.31-7 to version 1.3.33-2
upgraded filters version 2.33 to version 2.34
upgraded glimpse version 4.1-2 to version 4.18.0-3
upgraded gnupg-doc version 2003.04.06-2 to version 2003.04.06-3
upgraded hwtools version 0.8-1 to version 0.8-2
upgraded mysql-common version 4.0.21-7 to version 4.0.22-2
upgraded openssl version 0.9.6c-2.woody.6 to version 0.9.6c-2.woody.7
upgraded postgresql-doc version 7.4.6-2 to version 7.4.6-4
upgraded rusers version 0.17-5 to version 0.17-6
upgraded samba-doc version 3.0.7-2 to version 3.0.8-2
upgraded snort-common version 2.2.0-6 to version 2.2.0-7
upgraded ssleay version 0.9.6c-2.woody.6 to version 0.9.6c-2.woody.7
upgraded sudo version 1.6.6-1.1 to version 1.6.6-1.3
upgraded ethtool version 1.8-2 to version 2-1
upgraded hylafax-doc version 1:4.2.0-9 to version 4.2.0-13
upgraded rsh-client version 0.17-12 to version 0.17-13

4.
Two different systems, both went through the same tetex-bin upgrade:
upgraded tetex-bin version 1.0.7+20011202-7.1 to version 1.0.7+20011202-7.3
via apt-get
One of them worked flawlessly, the other (packages for that apt-get
upgrade set given in [3]) failed, and fails in very similar manner with
subsequent use of apt-get (which appears to rerun dpkg --configure,
which also fails in same manner):
Setting up tetex-bin (1.0.7+20011202-7.3) ...
Regenerating /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf ... done
Regenerating /etc/texmf/fmtutil.cnf ... done
warning: kpathsea: No usable entries in /usr/share/texmf/ls-R.
warning: kpathsea: See the manual for how to generate ls-R.
mktexlsr: Updating /usr/local/lib/texmf/ls-R...
mktexlsr: /var/lib/texmf/ls-R lacks magic string. Skipping...
mktexlsr: Updating /var/spool/texmf/ls-R...
mktexlsr: Done.
Running initex. This may take some time. ...
(same pair of warning lines above repeated another 17 times)   
Error: kpsewhich cannot find file fmtutil.cnf
dpkg: error processing tetex-bin (--configure):
A trace of Googling seems to indicate I'm not the only one who's
encountered this problem, e.g.:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-tetex-maint/2003/11/msg00104.html
On both systems, /usr/share/texmf/ls-R is a symbolic link to
/var/lib/texmf/ls-R which is an empty file on the system where tetex-bin
is broken, but has lots of apparently good data on the system where
tetex-bin is not broken.  No filesystem full problems or the like were
present.