Bug#867997: jessie->stretch, all apt clients break with /var/lib/dpkg/status realpath error
Alan Schwartz:
>> Sorry to hear you had issues with the upgrade.
>>
>> The problem you describe appears to be related to the release notes item
>> [5.3.2] (5.3.2.1 actually, but I cannot find the direct link to that).
>> The exact case with /var/lib/dpkg/status is not mentioned, but it could
>> be that there are some permissions on your system that forbit "_apt" to
>> access /var/lib/dpkg/status.
>>
>> * Could you please try to login in as the _apt user and check that it
>> can read /var/lib/dpkg/status?
>
> Due to the /nonexistent home directory and /bin/false login shell,
> it does not appear to be possible to log in as _apt:
>
> [...]
For future reference, you can "by-pass" that by using:
su -s/bin/bash _apt
That will grant you a shell as _apt provided it is run as root
(regardless of _apt's login shell and $HOME).
> _apt$ apt-get check
> E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock - open (13: Permission
> denied)
> E: Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you
> root?
>
FTR; I don't think that "apt-get check" is supposed to work as non-root.
>> - If it fails, please attempt to figure out where the permission
>> fails (e.g. [dir-test])
>
> # ls -ld / /var /var/lib /var/lib/dpkg /var/lib/dpkg/status
> drwxr-xr-x 21 root root 1024 Jul 10 11:21 /
> drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 May 7 2013 /var
> drwxr-xr-x 74 root root 4096 Jul 7 16:01 /var/lib
> drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4096 Jul 11 08:48 /var/lib/dpkg
> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1961225 Jul 11 08:48 /var/lib/dpkg/status
>
> As you can see, none of these are writable by _apt; however, these are
> the same permissions I see on the other (working)
Indeed, and _apt does not need write access to the status file.
Does it work if you disable the sandbox user, e.g. by using:
apt-get -o APT::Sandbox::User=root update
Thanks,
~Niels
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