On 2015-12-14 at 23:31, The Wanderer wrote: > On 2015-12-14 at 12:47, David Kalnischkies wrote: >> On Mon, Dec 14, 2015 at 11:42:34AM -0500, The Wanderer wrote: >> >>> Couldn't create tempfiles for splitting up >>> /var/lib/apt/lists/ftp.us.debian.org_debian_dists_testing_InRelease >> Interesting might be the permissions of your $TMPDIR: stat /tmp >> $TMPDIR > > $ stat /tmp $TMPDIR > File: ‘/tmp’ > Size: 53248 Blocks: 112 IO Block: 4096 directory > Device: fd02h/64770d Inode: 2 Links: 73 > Access: (0775/drwxrwxr-x) Uid: ( 1000/wanderer) Gid: ( 1004/ tmpdir) > Access: 2013-08-30 09:47:13.901246241 -0400 > Modify: 2015-12-14 23:14:47.519608765 -0500 > Change: 2015-12-14 23:14:47.519608765 -0500 > Birth: - > > IOW, it's not world-writable, and the group involved is probably not > a standard one. > > By comparison, on a different machine which doesn't have the > problem, /tmp is drwxrwxrwx root:root. > > Now that I've looked at this, I vaguely recall that I set /tmp up > this way intentionally, not long after I built this system - but I > can't remember why. I think it was simply that I couldn't write to > /tmp as my normal user otherwise, but that doesn't seem to hold with > the other system; there may also have been a bit of thinking that the > way /tmp looked in 'ls / --color=auto' with drwxrwxrwx root:root was > ugly, but if so I haven't noticed it on the other system in the past > few years. > > This is probably the culprit. I'll investigate changing this in the > morning, when I have more time and less of a headache. I've changed this to match the described configuration of the machine which works, and the error has disappeared. (I first tried just adding '_apt' to the group involved, which has write access to that directory, but that didn't work; I'm not really sure why.) Unless it's worth trying to detect this type of case in the code and either adapt to work around it or provide a more useful error message, about the only thing I think might be called for would be update documentation to at least provide a hint of where to look. (Someone should probably also point this out to the person who reported the Ubuntu bug I linked to; I may, if no one else does.) If that's not worth it either, this bug can probably be closed as (a somewhat unusual form of) operator error. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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