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Bug#793444: marked as done (apt: jessie-backports non-free i386 packages causes "Falling back to normal index file acquire" error)

Your message dated Mon, 27 Jul 2015 11:35:39 +0200
with message-id <20150727093539.GA23156@crossbow>
and subject line Re: Bug#793444: apt: jessie-backports non-free i386 packages causes "Falling back to normal index file acquire" error
has caused the Debian Bug report #793444,
regarding apt: jessie-backports non-free i386 packages causes "Falling back to normal index file acquire" error
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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-- 
793444: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=793444
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message --- 
Package: apt
Version: 1.0.9.8
Severity: normal

Howdy maintainers,

I've found what I believe to be a strange bug, either with apt or with
the current Debian apt repository.

We are seeing strange lines in our stderr when we run `apt-get update`:

    Falling back to normal index file acquire

This has been happening since July 15 and never before.

I found a way to reproduce the problem on our machines:

    $ rm /var/lib/apt/lists/mirrors.ocf.berkeley.edu_debian_dists_jessie-backports_non-free_binary-i386_Packages
    $ apt-get update > /dev/null  # no complaints
    $ apt-get update > /dev/null  # complains again!

I confirmed that our copy of the Packages file matches
http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/jessie-backports/non-free/binary-i386/Packages.gz
(currently SHA1 of 59fa80b71ee5c40948bb7f2a97e209b9eb97b443 un-gzipped)

This can be replicated in a clean jessie VM like so:

  1. dpkg --add-architecture i386
  2. echo 'deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ jessie-backports non-free' >> /etc/apt/sources.list
  3. apt-get update > /dev/null  # this one works
  4. apt-get update > /dev/null  # now we get a complaint to stderr

(Your apt config must not store Packages files gzipped. If you're
testing with the "official" Debian Docker images, you'll want to run
`rm /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/docker*` first.)

I can't find any immediate problems with the Packages file, so I'm not
sure where this bug is happening. Hopefully you can direct this to the
right place if it's not a bug in apt.

Many thanks!
Chris


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.1
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages apt depends on:
ii  debian-archive-keyring  2014.3
ii  gnupg                   1.4.18-7
ii  libapt-pkg4.12          1.0.9.8
ii  libc6                   2.19-18
ii  libgcc1                 1:4.9.2-10
ii  libstdc++6              4.9.2-10

apt recommends no packages.

Versions of packages apt suggests:
pn  apt-doc     <none>
ii  aptitude    0.6.11-1+b1
ii  dpkg-dev    1.17.25
ii  python-apt  0.9.3.11

-- no debconf information

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
Hi Chrises :)

On Thu, Jul 23, 2015 at 10:19:21PM -0700, Chris Kuehl wrote:
> We are seeing strange lines in our stderr when we run `apt-get update`:
> 
>     Falling back to normal index file acquire
> 
> This has been happening since July 15 and never before.

I have the impression that backports enabled pdiff support recently
(based on the fact that the oldest file is from around that day) which
is basically a way of saving bandwidth for users and mirrors alike by
not downloading the entire index file (Packages, Sources, …), but just
a few (much smaller) patches for these files.

If apt detects that downloading the patches would be too wasteful
compared to just downloading the entire index (e.g. all patches needed
are combined bigger than the index itself) or that there are in fact no
patches to apply as it already has the latest file it will "fail" pdiff
and falls back to the normal index file acquire.

That is usually not explicitely visible for the user, the experienced
can predict that from the progress lines maybe, but in this case a silly
error makes this 'very' visible for you currently:

"Someone" forgot to hide the debug message printed in one of these cases
behind the debug option – so its displayed all the time, rather than
just then debug is enabled… (bad as the message alone doesn't give a lot
of info – its depending on the messages printed in context, but those
are properly hidden…)


Long story short: This "error" is normal, totally harmless and will
disappear again in a subsequent release as the patch is known and
commited for a while now:
https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/apt/apt.git/diff/?id=f4c7a238f4c29ac9b1e1172f103ab7dec5c5807d

As I think there remains nothing to be done (expect for me to get
a proper beating I guess ;) ) I am closing this bugreport now.


Thanks for the report & Best regards

David Kalnischkies

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