Bug#383487: parsing packages files: Reads from pipe results in corrupt data

[Jeroen van Wolffelaar <jeroen@wolffelaar.nl>]

On Thu, Aug 17, 2006 at 05:53:35PM +0200, Jeroen van Wolffelaar wrote:
> Package: python-apt
> Version: 0.6.19
> Severity: serious

I could reproduce this with 0.5.10 (sarge's version) of python-apt,
compiled on unstable. 0.5.10 on stable does not exhibit this problem.

So:

env.  apt   python-apt result

sarge sarge sarge      ok
sarge sarge sid        ?
sarge sid   sarge      ?
sarge sid   sid        broken

sid   sarge sarge      ?
sid   sarge sid        ?
sid   sid   sarge      broken
sid   sid   sid        broken

(env. = environment, 'the rest' (python, libc, etc))

This does not exclude the possibility that the problem is in libapt.
Looking at the differences in tagfile.cc in apt, there are
buffering/mmap changes made to the reading code, which is IMHO highly
suspicious of the exhibited buggy behaviour.

Also, in python-apt, there are no noteworthy changes that could have
introduced this bug, although it's always a possibility that the code
has always been wrong but only now triggered by the changes in apt.

--Jeroen

-- 
Jeroen van Wolffelaar
Jeroen@wolffelaar.nl (also for Jabber & MSN; ICQ: 33944357)
http://Jeroen.A-Eskwadraat.nl