Hi!

If a user has debian-security-support from wheezy-backports installed then
its triggers are run many many times during the wheezy→jessie upgrade.
The triggers are run each dpkg run and apt will run dpkg many times during
such a large upgrade. The result is that the user is potentially show the
"limited security support" dialogue box several times. Unlike debconf
preconfiguring, this dialogue is shown during the upgrade not before it,
meaning that the dist-upgrade needs even more attention than it otherwise
would. I received 9 separate prompts from debian-security-support when
I upgraded this machine from wheezy+wheezy-backports to jessie.

(while installing a package from wheezy-backports might not be considered
to be a supported configuration, this same problem will eventually hit
jessie→stretch upgrades)

Given debian-security-support is using triggers not apt hooks, I'm not
sure there is a nice solution to this problem; however, that doesn't change
the fact that having to babysit the dist-upgrade through 9 additional prompts
is a quite suboptimal user experience.

cheers
Stuart

Stuart Prescott <stuart@debian.org> writes:

If it wasn't supported, I don't think src:debian-security-support would
have information regarding security support of packages in squeeze and
wheezy?

Well, it's since switched to dpkg hooks[1], but that doesn't really help
here (and presumably makes this WORSE when apt has dpkg postpone
triggers as much as possible, though that isn't the default [yet?]).

Apt's DPkg::Pre-Install-Pkgs hook does look like it would help a lot;
here's how apt-listbugs does it:

,----[ /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10apt-listbugs ]
| // Check all packages whether they has critical bugs before they are installed.
| // If you don't like it, comment it out.
| DPkg::Pre-Install-Pkgs {"/usr/sbin/apt-listbugs apt || exit 10";};
| DPkg::Tools::Options::/usr/sbin/apt-listbugs "";
| DPkg::Tools::Options::/usr/sbin/apt-listbugs::Version "2";
| // AptListbugs::IgnoreRegexp "FTBFS";
`----

Unfortunately, the hook protocol documentation appears to be rather
difficult to find ...

[1]: https://bugs.debian.org/762031

control: tags -1 + moreinfo
thanks

hi,

is "#775503: debian-security-support: Multiple prompting on dist-upgrades is annoying"
still an issue today? I don't recall seeing it on upgrades this year...

control: tags -1 + moreinfo
thanks

hi,

is "#775503: debian-security-support: Multiple prompting on dist-upgrades is annoying"
still an issue today? I don't recall seeing it on upgrades this year...