#1121168 grub-common leaves filled /usr/share/doc/grub-common aronud

Package:
grub-common
Source:
grub-common
Description:
GRand Unified Bootloader (common files)
Submitter:
Marc Haber
Date:
2025-12-04 20:41:01 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1121168#5
Date:
2025-11-22 09:35:27 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

grub-common has recently become a transitional package. Somehow before
that, the grub-common package lost its contents in
/usr/share/doc/grub-common, but that conten is still in the filesystem:

[6/4758]mh@swivel:~ $ ls -al /usr/share/doc/grub-common/
total 416K
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root  184 Nov  4 10:40 ./
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 108K Nov 21 07:45 ../
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  669 Jul 18 16:39 AUTHORS
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  17K Nov  2 12:08 changelog.Debian.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 336K Jul 18 16:39 changelog.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  23K Nov  2 12:08 copyright
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root   16 Nov  4 10:40 examples/
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  242 Nov  2 12:08 NEWS.Debian.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9,2K Jul 18 16:39 NEWS.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1,1K Jul 18 16:39 README
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1,4K Jul 18 16:39 THANKS
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  318 Jul 18 16:39 TODO
[7/4759]mh@swivel:~ $ dpkg --listfiles grub-common
/.
/usr
/usr/share
/usr/share/bug
/usr/share/bug/grub-common
/usr/share/bug/grub-common/presubj
/usr/share/bug/grub-common/script
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/grub-common
[8/4760]mh@swivel:~ $

This leaves the docs around even after purging grub-common.

I can see this on four unstable installations. I didn't try a fifth.

Frankly, I do not understand how this could happen, dpkg is supposed to
delete files that were in the installed version of a package and are no
longer in the new version of a package. So this might as well be a dpkg
bug. I am sorry that I don't have enough time these days to investigate
this further.

Greetings
Marc

#1121168#10
Date:
2025-12-04 20:32:21 UTC
From:
To:
I saw the same issue today on a debian testing system with a fairly long
update history (but not on a more recent installation).

Here, the cause seems to be an obsolete(?) symlink:

/usr/share/doc# ls -ld grub*common
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Dec  4 21:02 grub-common
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   11 Dec 16  2015 grub2-common -> grub-common

/usr/share/doc# dpkg -S /usr/share/doc/grub2-common/*
grub2-common: /usr/share/doc/grub2-common/AUTHORS
grub2-common: /usr/share/doc/grub2-common/NEWS.Debian.gz
grub2-common: /usr/share/doc/grub2-common/NEWS.gz
grub2-common: /usr/share/doc/grub2-common/README
grub2-common: /usr/share/doc/grub2-common/THANKS
grub2-common: /usr/share/doc/grub2-common/TODO
grub2-common: /usr/share/doc/grub2-common/changelog.Debian.gz
grub2-common: /usr/share/doc/grub2-common/changelog.gz
grub2-common: /usr/share/doc/grub2-common/copyright
grub2-common: /usr/share/doc/grub2-common/examples

The files installed to /usr/share/doc/grub-common (due to the symlink)
actually belong to the grub2-common package.

Regards,
Elmar Ludwig