[Pkgutil-users] pkgutil bug - cannot handle empty repos

[<ma...@pr...>]

Using v2.1 of pkgutil.

I've set-up these mirror options in /etc/opt/csw/pkgutil.conf:

mirror=https://swrepo.mydomain.com/sw/current
mirror=https://swrepo.mydomain.com/sw/stable
mirror=https://swrepo.mydomain.com/sw/unstable

I would like these to be standard settings across all of my development clients (and potentially other lists of repos too).

However, it is quite possible that sometimes the "unstable" repo might not actually contain any software.  So it has no catalogue file, it's just an empty directory.

We're GPG signing everything ...

# pkgutil -U
<snip>
=> Fetching new catalog and descriptions (https://swrepo.mydomain.com/sw/unstable/i386/5.10) if available ...
--2010-08-03 12:57:39--  https://swrepo.mydomain.com/sw/unstable/i386/5.10/catalog
...
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
2010-08-03 12:57:39 ERROR 404: Not Found.
...
Fetching of catalog failed.

Ok, it would be nicer if it said "no catalog available", as actually there has been no failure, it has done what was expected.  But that's an aside.  Let's continue ...

# pkgutil -a
Checking catalog integrity with gpg.
gpg: Signature made 29 July 2010 10:36:28 BST using DSA key ID 61404A7B
gpg: Good signature from "swrepo server <root@testhost>"
Checking catalog integrity with gpg.
gpg: Signature made  3 August 2010 12:47:13 BST using DSA key ID 61404A7B
gpg: Good signature from "swrepo server <root@testhost>"
Catalog /var/opt/csw/pkgutil/catalog.swrepo.mydomain.com_sw_unstable_i386_5.10 is not signed! Check your mirror settings or disable use_gpg in pkgutil.conf.

# ls -l /var/opt/csw/pkgutil/catalog.swrepo.mydomain.com_sw_unstable_i386_5.10
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root           0 Aug  3 12:57 /var/opt/csw/pkgutil/catalog.swrepo.mydomain.com_sw_unstable_i386_5.10

So, because we had an empty repo with no catalogue file, pkgutil has created a zero-length file in /var which is, of course, not GPG signed.  Our client is now no longer able to use the repo.

Ok, what if we delete the file?

# rm /var/opt/csw/pkgutil/catalog.swrepo.mydomain.com_sw_unstable_i386_5.10
# pkgutil -a
Checking catalog integrity with gpg.
gpg: Signature made 29 July 2010 10:36:28 BST using DSA key ID 61404A7B
gpg: Good signature from "swrepo server <root@testhost>"
Checking catalog integrity with gpg.
gpg: Signature made  3 August 2010 12:47:13 BST using DSA key ID 61404A7B
gpg: Good signature from "swrepo server <root@testhost>"
=> Fetching new catalog and descriptions (https://swrepo.mydomain.com/sw/unstable/i386/5.10) if available ...
--2010-08-03 13:05:59--  https://swrepo.mydomain.com/sw/unstable/i386/5.10/catalog
...
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
2010-08-03 13:05:59 ERROR 404: Not Found.
...
Fetching of catalog failed.

Nope, that doesn't work.  The only solution is to comment out

mirror=https://swrepo.mydomain.com/sw/unstable

in /etc/opt/csw/pkgutil.conf.  Or, of course, create an empty catalog file in the empty repo and GPG sign it.  Ideally pkgutil should be better at handling empty repos.

Regards,
Mark.