David Kalnischkies wrote:
apt doesn't check many stuff: This is wrong, correct - BUT you should not reach this code as a "normal" user.
Yes, I said in my comment that I had weird permissions on the lock: I understand that normally it is not supposed to be run in this way. But as you say, a segfault is not the right result.
For the patch itself: I guess we should switch the logfile
to use FileFD (apt-pkg/contrib/fileutl.{cc,h}) as this would
handle most of the file related errors for us, e.g. if we run
out of disk space (pretty uncommon nowadays - but is one
of the error conditions which could led to this failure for root ).
I don't know the code base at all, I was just suggesting a quick fix. You are of course right that this could occur even for root as the code stands, so someone with better knowledge than I should review/test the patch or move it over to using FileFD.
-- sam brightman