Bug#931951: lintian: False positive: command-in-sbin-has-manpage-in-incorrect-section for symlinks in sbin
Package: lintian
Version: 2.16.0
Severity: normal
Hello,
I have been bitten by a Lintian check false positive on my package
(apt-listbugs):
command-in-sbin-has-manpage-in-incorrect-section
My package indeed ships "/usr/sbin/apt-listbugs" and the man page
is indeed in section 1 ("/usr/share/man/man1/apt-listbugs.1.gz").
But "/usr/sbin/apt-listbugs" is actually a symlink to
"/usr/bin/apt-listbugs":
$ ls -altrF /usr/*bin/apt-listbugs
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 Apr 22 16:23 /usr/sbin/apt-listbugs -> ../bin/apt-listbugs*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 22111 Apr 22 16:23 /usr/bin/apt-listbugs*
The reason is that, a long time ago, the package used to only ship
"/usr/sbin/apt-listbugs"; at a certain point, it was decided to move
the program to "/usr/bin/", since some of its operating modes
are useful to non-privileged users, too.
However, a number of users could have created custom scripts which
invoke "/usr/sbin/apt-listbugs": in order to avoid gratuitously
breaking all those scripts, it was decided to keep the program
in both "/usr/sbin" and "/usr/bin", with one path being a symlink to
the other.
I think the Lintian complaint is a false positive. Lintian should
look whether the "/usr/sbin/$file" is actually a symlink (to
"/usr/bin/$file") and refrain from emitting the complaint, if this
is the case.
I hope this bug may be fixed soon.
Thanks for your time.
Bye!
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 10.0
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (800, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-5-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US:en (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled
Versions of packages lintian depends on:
ii binutils 2.31.1-16
ii bzip2 1.0.6-9.1
ii diffstat 1.62-1
ii dpkg 1.19.7
ii dpkg-dev 1.19.7
ii file 1:5.35-4
ii gettext 0.19.8.1-9
ii gpg 2.2.13-2
ii intltool-debian 0.35.0+20060710.5
ii libapt-pkg-perl 0.1.36+b1
ii libarchive-zip-perl 1.64-1
ii libcapture-tiny-perl 0.48-1
ii libcgi-pm-perl 4.40-1
ii libclass-accessor-perl 0.51-1
ii libclone-perl 0.41-1+b1
pn libdigest-sha-perl <none>
ii libdpkg-perl 1.19.7
ii libemail-valid-perl 1.202-1
ii libfile-basedir-perl 0.08-1
ii libio-async-perl 0.72-1
ii libipc-run-perl 20180523.0-1
ii liblist-compare-perl 0.53-1
ii liblist-moreutils-perl 0.416-1+b4
ii libparse-debianchangelog-perl 1.2.0-13
ii libpath-tiny-perl 0.108-1
ii libtext-levenshtein-perl 0.13-1
ii libtimedate-perl 2.3000-2
ii libtry-tiny-perl 0.30-1
ii liburi-perl 1.76-1
ii libxml-simple-perl 2.25-1
ii libyaml-libyaml-perl 0.76+repack-1
ii man-db 2.8.5-2
ii patchutils 0.3.4-2
ii perl 5.28.1-6
ii t1utils 1.41-3
ii xz-utils 5.2.4-1
Versions of packages lintian recommends:
ii libperlio-gzip-perl 0.19-1+b5
Versions of packages lintian suggests:
pn binutils-multiarch <none>
ii libhtml-parser-perl 3.72-3+b3
ii libtext-template-perl 1.55-1
-- no debconf information
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