Bug#812251: apt: suddenly segfaults after "apt update"

[Julian Andres Klode <jak@debian.org>]

On 22 January 2016 at 00:31, Sven Hartge <sven@svenhartge.de> wrote:
> Package: apt
> Version: 1.2
> Severity: important
>
> Hi!
>
> This is Debian Sid on a Cubietruck.
>
> Today, suddenly, apt, apt-get and aptitude all segfault after the recent
> update to the package lists.
>
>  "apt update" works but segfaults at the end during "Reading package lists ..."
>
>  "apt-get update" the same (unsurprising)
>
>  "aptitude update" segfaults immediately (after running a bit, but
>  before downloading anything)
>
>  "gdb aptitude update" on the other hand segfaults after downloading
>  something. (Weird. Heisebug?)
>
> I am attaching backtraces for both apt and aptitude.
>
> (If you need the contents of /var/lib/apt* and /var/lib/dpkg/status I
> can make those available via seperate download.
>

Thanks. It seems that your cache is being remapped, and the version
stringview we generated by passing Ver.VerStr() to NewProvides()
becomes invalid in that call. Previously, this was a string, copying
the memory instead.

There are potentially two ways to solve this: Allow the cache
generator to remap string views where needed or revert affected parts
back to strings. Obviously, strings have some performance overhead,
especially on arm, which is why I replaced them with views in the
first place.

In the meantime, you can workaround the issue by setting
APT::Cache-Start to a large value.

-- 
Julian Andres Klode  - Debian Developer, Ubuntu Member

See http://wiki.debian.org/JulianAndresKlode and http://jak-linux.org/.