Bug 9911 - mga-applet is failing to notify regarding updates
Summary: mga-applet is failing to notify regarding updates
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Mageia
Classification: Unclassified
Component: RPM Packages (show other bugs)
Version: Cauldron
Hardware: i586 Linux
Priority: Normal normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Thierry Vignaud
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2013-04-29 16:27 CEST by George Mitchell
Modified: 2013-05-04 18:06 CEST (History)
0 users

See Also:
Source RPM: mgaonline-2.79-1.mga3
CVE:
Status comment:


Attachments

Description George Mitchell 2013-04-29 16:27:02 CEST
Description of problem:
mga-applet runs but fails to determine whether system is up to date.  As a result there is no notification when updates are available.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:

Watch the system journal and note that mga-applet never follows up with an analysis of the downloaded repository information after having run urpmi.update.


Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.


Reproducible: 

Steps to Reproduce:
Comment 1 George Mitchell 2013-05-01 20:33:35 CEST
I removed mgaonline with rpm -e.  I then reinstalled mgaonline and checked for the file â/etc/cron.daily/mgaupdate.  It had not been created and rpm -V mgaonline does not detect that it is missing.  I am no longer even seeing mga-applet run when I check the system journal.  And I am not getting any notifications when updates are available.
Comment 2 George Mitchell 2013-05-01 21:50:03 CEST
(In reply to George Mitchell from comment #1)
> I removed mgaonline with rpm -e.  I then reinstalled mgaonline and checked
> for the file â/etc/cron.daily/mgaupdate.  It had not been created and rpm -V
> mgaonline does not detect that it is missing.  I am no longer even seeing
> mga-applet run when I check the system journal.  And I am not getting any
> notifications when updates are available.

OK ... this one should not exist because it is a ghost file.  But that still does not address the problem that the update notification system has stopped working.
Comment 3 Manuel Hiebel 2013-05-01 22:37:39 CEST
does it work if you launch manually mgaapplet ? (iirc it doesn't work in cauldron as the applet doesn't search in */release but I really not sure)

Version: 3 => Cauldron
Assignee: bugsquad => thierry.vignaud

Comment 4 George Mitchell 2013-05-02 02:47:08 CEST
At this point mgaapplet is running.  In fact there are now two instances of it running.  Not sure why that is.  But it is not checking for updates.  Up to a few days ago it was downloading the status files, but doing nothing with them.  Normally it will indicate on the journal either that there are updates available or that no updates are available and everything is current.  For some reason it stopped doing that.  Is there some way to make mgaapplet "verbose" and launch it manually and get some sort of output from it?  I haven't found much documentation on it as to how it works and that has been a real handicap in terms of trying to troubleshoot it.  - George
Comment 5 George Mitchell 2013-05-02 17:06:54 CEST
Now it is showing up in the journal again, but still not reporting updates available.  Here is the text I am seeing in the journal:

May 02 06:57:52 localhost.localdomain systemd[1]: Started Stop Read-Ahead Data Collection.
May 02 06:57:55 localhost.localdomain mgaapplet[2669]: running: ionice -p 2669 -n7
May 02 07:01:01 localhost.localdomain crond[2903]: pam_tcb(crond:session): Session opened for root by root(uid=0)
May 02 07:01:01 localhost.localdomain CROND[2904]: (root) CMD (nice -n 19 run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly)
May 02 07:01:01 localhost.localdomain anacron[2910]: Anacron started on 2013-05-02
May 02 07:01:01 localhost.localdomain anacron[2910]: Will run job `daily-backup' in 3 min.
May 02 07:01:01 localhost.localdomain anacron[2910]: Will run job `cron.daily' in 6 min.
May 02 07:01:01 localhost.localdomain anacron[2910]: Will run job `daily-scrub' in 61 min.
May 02 07:01:01 localhost.localdomain anacron[2910]: Jobs will be executed sequentially
May 02 07:01:02 localhost.localdomain CROND[2903]: pam_tcb(crond:session): Session closed for root
May 02 07:02:55 localhost.localdomain mgaapplet[2669]: Computing new updates...
May 02 07:02:55 localhost.localdomain mgaapplet[2987]: running: urpmi.update -a
May 02 07:02:55 localhost.localdomain userhelper[2995]: running '/usr/sbin/urpmi.update -a' with root privileges on behalf of 'ghmitch'
May 02 07:03:06 localhost.localdomain mgaapplet[2987]: updating inactive backport media Core Backports (distrib7), Core Backports Testing (d
May 02 07:03:06 localhost.localdomain mgaapplet[2987]: running: urpmi.update Core Backports (distrib7)
May 02 07:03:06 localhost.localdomain userhelper[3021]: running '/usr/sbin/urpmi.update Core Backports (distrib7)' with root privileges on b
May 02 07:03:07 localhost.localdomain mgaapplet[2987]: running: urpmi.update Core Backports Testing (distrib9)
May 02 07:03:07 localhost.localdomain userhelper[3034]: running '/usr/sbin/urpmi.update Core Backports Testing (distrib9)' with root privile
May 02 07:03:08 localhost.localdomain mgaapplet[2987]: running: urpmi.update Nonfree Backports (distrib17)
May 02 07:03:08 localhost.localdomain userhelper[3046]: running '/usr/sbin/urpmi.update Nonfree Backports (distrib17)' with root privileges 
May 02 07:03:09 localhost.localdomain mgaapplet[2987]: running: urpmi.update Nonfree Backports Testing (distrib19)
May 02 07:03:09 localhost.localdomain userhelper[3057]: running '/usr/sbin/urpmi.update Nonfree Backports Testing (distrib19)' with root pri
May 02 07:03:10 localhost.localdomain mgaapplet[2987]: running: urpmi.update Tainted Backports (distrib27)
May 02 07:03:10 localhost.localdomain userhelper[3069]: running '/usr/sbin/urpmi.update Tainted Backports (distrib27)' with root privileges 
May 02 07:03:10 localhost.localdomain mgaapplet[2987]: running: urpmi.update Tainted Backports Testing (distrib29)
May 02 07:03:10 localhost.localdomain userhelper[3080]: running '/usr/sbin/urpmi.update Tainted Backports Testing (distrib29)' with root pri
May 02 07:04:01 localhost.localdomain anacron[2910]: Job `daily-backup' started
May 02 07:04:03 localhost.localdomain kernel: device label BACKUP devid 1 transid 2148 /dev/sdi
May 02 07:04:03 localhost.localdomain kernel: btrfs: disk space caching is enabled

And that is it.  That is all I am seeing.  In this case there WERE updates available at the time this ran.


- George
Comment 6 George Mitchell 2013-05-04 18:06:55 CEST
mgaapplet runs fine when run as root, but fails when run as ordinary user:

[ghmitch@localhost ~]$ mgaapplet
getting exclusive lock on urpmi
unlocking urpmi database
medium "Core Release (distrib1)" is up-to-date
medium "Core Updates (distrib3)" is up-to-date
medium "Nonfree Release (distrib11)" is up-to-date
medium "Nonfree Updates (distrib13)" is up-to-date
medium "Tainted Release (distrib21)" is up-to-date
medium "Tainted Updates (distrib23)" is up-to-date
medium "Core Backports (distrib7)" is up-to-date
medium "Core Backports Testing (distrib9)" is up-to-date
medium "Nonfree Backports (distrib17)" is up-to-date
medium "Nonfree Backports Testing (distrib19)" is up-to-date
medium "Tainted Backports (distrib27)" is up-to-date
medium "Tainted Backports Testing (distrib29)" is up-to-date
using mirror ftp://mirrors.kernel.org/mageia/distrib/cauldron/i586
examining synthesis file [/var/lib/urpmi/Core Release (distrib1)/synthesis.hdlist.cz]
examining synthesis file [/var/lib/urpmi/Core Updates (distrib3)/synthesis.hdlist.cz]
examining synthesis file [/var/lib/urpmi/Nonfree Release (distrib11)/synthesis.hdlist.cz]
examining synthesis file [/var/lib/urpmi/Nonfree Updates (distrib13)/synthesis.hdlist.cz]
examining synthesis file [/var/lib/urpmi/Tainted Release (distrib21)/synthesis.hdlist.cz]
examining synthesis file [/var/lib/urpmi/Tainted Updates (distrib23)/synthesis.hdlist.cz]
error: cannot open Packages index using db5 - Permission denied (13)
error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
Fontconfig warning: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/50-user.conf", line 9: reading configurations from ~/.fonts.conf is deprecated.
[xcb] Unknown sequence number while processing queue
[xcb] Most likely this is a multi-threaded client and XInitThreads has not been called
[xcb] Aborting, sorry about that.
perl: xcb_io.c:273: poll_for_event: Assertion `!xcb_xlib_threads_sequence_lost' failed.
Aborted

This *may* be related to the fact that I have been removing world writable permissions scattered all over in response to msec warnings that have been pouring out.  I have also been looking at other security issues.  According to Red Hat's sectool, /var/lib/rpm should not be accessible to the "world".  And addressing that issue killed mgaapplet.  So I shall mark this bug resolved and open another one regarding the security issue.  It DOES seem rather dumb to leave the package databases wide open to anyone who might wander in.

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
Resolution: (none) => FIXED


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