Update error - novice asking advice

MNT Reform
1

During my latest update attempt, i ran into this error :

Fetched 187 MB in 6s (34.0 MB/s)
Retrieving bug reports… Done
Parsing Found/Fixed information… Done
serious bugs of git (1:2.53.0-1 → 1:2.55.0-1)
b1 - #1146518 - git breaks dgit autopkgtest
Merged with: 1147088
serious bugs of flash-kernel (3.110+reform20260528T082855Z+1 → 3.110+reform20260806T212135Z+1)
b2 - #1148115 - with linux 7.2: fails with dpkg-query: no packages found matching
Summary:
git(1 bug), flash-kernel(1 bug)
Are you sure you want to install/upgrade the above packages? [Y/n/?/…] n

****** Exiting with an error in order to stop the installation. ******

Error: Sub-process /usr/bin/apt-listbugs apt returned an error code (10)
Error: Failure running script /usr/bin/apt-listbugs apt.

This is the third time I choose ‘n’, in a “wait and see - try later” mindset… maybe the bug will be taken care of. But now i wonder whether there could be a workaround.

(I did an apt update, apt full-upgrade, choose no, then autoremove).

Edit : it’s the third time i run into a bug report, but the previous ones where related to other packets i think. This could be an aswer : the previous where obviously solved. Am i wrong ?

2

The message looks scary but the capital Y is telling you that it’s ok accept this minor risk. Reform typically runs the bleeding-edge Debian Linux if you installed the image from MNT. This is not an ‘error’ and is working as designed to let you know there may be some minor bugs or regressions. In my experience none of them are showstoppers.

3

Hi, here is an explanation of the bug: I Challenge Thee

I would not call this bug “minor” which is why I reported it as “release critical” and that’s why it shows up in apt-listbugs. The problem is, that flash-kernel stops working with linux kernel 7.2. The bug has a patch that the maintainer can apply.

We work around this problem for the MNT platform by building a patched version of flash-kernel where I applied the patch here:

https://source.mnt.re/reform/reform-debian-packages/-/commit/ef1655142afd13c3f91474988dc545e1e6bd8780

The problem is that this fix cannot be deployed into the MNT Debian repository because the pipeline fails to run. The pipeline failure is because Debian has kernel 7.2 in unstable and the MNT Debian repo script doesn’t support kernel 7.2 yet. The current fix is in this MR:

https://source.mnt.re/reform/reform-debian-packages/-/merge_requests/195

The above introduces a new way to handle patches which no longer uses directories with patches but an actual git tree with commits for each upstream stable kernel version and @stephano has rebased the patches for 7.2 here:

https://source.mnt.re/josch/linux/-/tree/mnt-v7.2.6

Resolving this situation is not straight forward. There are multiple orthogonal things that could be done, like:

  • fix the flash-kernel bug in Debian which I can do but didn’t get to yet because my left leg stopped working due to some brain bleeding so I’m not 100% right now
  • @minute could review MR195 and if it’s okay to merge it will enable linux 7.2 and that will include my fix to flash-kernel
  • instead of merging MR195, the changes by @stephano could be put into a new linux/patches7.2 directory as a band-aid until MR195 is ready

I don’t think that this is how the capital Y should be interpreted. I think it just should mean “if you don’t type anything but just press enter, then this is the default action”. If you see bugs listed by apt-listbugs, you should usually investigate whether they affect you or not. Unfortunately, in case of this bug, finding out what the situation is actually about is a bit more complex, sorry for that.

No, apt-listbugs will only show you RC bugs i.e. release-critical bugs. These are bugs which can go all the way to rm -rf $HOME so please be careful when you “click away” the bugs apt-listbugs lists. Yes, they are harmless in some cases but to find out whether they affect you or not you usually have to read the bug description. To make this easier, the apt-listbugs version 0.1.49 and later will allow you to click with your mouse on the bug and the bug description will open up in your browser. See this bug: I Challenge Thee

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4

Thanks for the detailed information! I guess the user interface here is less transparent than I interpreted, and this specific bug actually is an important one. That said I don’t think I’ve had a show-stopping bug hit my system in recent times by following the suggestion of apt-listbugs, if that’s what’s intended by the default behavior.

Sending you well wishes for a speedy recovery, josch!

1 Like