cross-debootstrap error

[Diddier Hilarion]

Hi all.

I have the following problem when I try to do crossdebootstrap of arm64 as specified in the following page of the wiki

https://wiki.debian.org/Arm64Qemu

I got stuck in the fourth step, after doing the specified i get the following error message

I: Running command: chroot debian_arm64_jessie/ /debootstrap/debootstrap --second-stage
I: Keyring file not available at /usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-keyring.gpg; switching to https mirror https://mirrors.kernel.org/debian
I: Installing core packages...
W: Failure trying to run:  dpkg --force-depends --install /var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_8+deb8u4_arm64.deb
W: See //debootstrap/debootstrap.log for details (possibly the package /var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_8+deb8u4_arm64.deb is at fault)

the content of the mentioned log is the following

gpgv: Signature made Sat Apr  2 04:56:05 2016 COT using RSA key ID 46925553
gpgv: Good signature from "Debian Archive Automatic Signing Key (7.0/wheezy) <ftpm...@debian.or
g>"
gpgv: Signature made Sat Apr  2 04:56:05 2016 COT using RSA key ID 2B90D010
gpgv: Good signature from "Debian Archive Automatic Signing Key (8/jessie) <ftpm...@debian.org>
"
gpgv: Signature made Sat Apr  2 05:02:07 2016 COT using RSA key ID 518E17E1
gpgv: Good signature from "Jessie Stable Release Key <debian-...@lists.debian.org>"
dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 5 package 'dpkg':
 missing description
dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 5 package 'dpkg':
 missing architecture
Selecting previously unselected package base-passwd.
(Reading database ... 0 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../base-passwd_3.5.37_arm64.deb ...
Unpacking base-passwd (3.5.37) ...
dpkg: base-passwd: dependency problems, but configuring anyway as you requested:
 base-passwd depends on libc6 (>= 2.17); however:
  Package libc6 is not installed.
 base-passwd depends on libdebconfclient0 (>= 0.145); however:
  Package libdebconfclient0 is not installed.

Setting up base-passwd (3.5.37) ...
dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 24 package 'dpkg':
 missing description
dpkg: warning: parsing file '/var/lib/dpkg/status' near line 24 package 'dpkg':
 missing architecture
Selecting previously unselected package base-files.
dpkg: regarding .../base-files_8+deb8u4_arm64.deb containing base-files, pre-dependency problem:
 base-files pre-depends on awk
  awk is not installed.

dpkg: warning: ignoring pre-dependency problem!
(Reading database ... 41 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../base-files_8+deb8u4_arm64.deb ...
Unpacking base-files (8+deb8u4) ...
dpkg: error processing archive /var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_8+deb8u4_arm64.deb (--install):
 symbolic link '/etc/os-release' size has changed from 50 to 21
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_8+deb8u4_arm64.deb

It seems to be an integrity problem with base_files but after deleting it from the cache the problem persists.

Thanks in advance for any clue to solve this.

[Christian Seiler]

Hi,

On 04/30/2016 10:20 PM, Diddier Hilarion wrote:
> I have the following problem when I try to do crossdebootstrap of arm64
> as specified in the following page of the wiki
>
> https://wiki.debian.org/Arm64Qemu
>
> I got stuck in the fourth step, after doing the specified i get the
> following error message
>

> //Unpacking base-files (8+deb8u4) ...//
> //dpkg: error processing archive
> /var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_8+deb8u4_arm64.deb (--install)://
> // symbolic link '/etc/os-release' size has changed from 50 to 21//
> //Errors were encountered while processing://
> // /var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_8+deb8u4_arm64.deb//
> /

>
> It seems to be an integrity problem with base_files but after deleting
> it from the cache the problem persists.

This is really weird, especially since /etc/os-release is owned by
base-files, so it should only be created when the package is installed,
and it also shouldn't be a symbolic link but rather a regular file.

I have a setup here where I can generate qemu-based chroots for building
packages on multiple architectures, and that uses qemu-debootstrap
internally. I just tried to build one for jessie/arm64, which succeeded.
Internally, it ran the following command:

/usr/sbin/qemu-debootstrap --include=apt --arch arm64 --variant=buildd \
--force-check-gpg jessie directory \
http://mirror/

(Replace directory and http://mirror/ accordingly.)

If that doesn't work for you, you could try a different mirror, although
I'm not sure whether that can indeed help, because debootstrap tries to
verify that packages are correct when downloading them, so any
transmission error would have been picked up on.

Other than that:

- What filesystem are you using? Did you run a filesystem check (fsck)
recently?
- Is the target directory empty (or non-existent) before you run
qemu-debootstrap?
- Are there other processes running that might do stuff in the
directory where you bootstrap into?
- Does a normal debootstrap of your native architecture work?
- What is your host OS?
- Which versions of qemu-user-static and debootstrap?

Regards,
Christian

[Santiago Vila]

Christian Seiler wrote:

> This is really weird, especially since /etc/os-release is owned by
> base-files, so it should only be created when the package is installed,

Yes, it is weird, but debootstrap has to put everything together, so
if it has to put the symlink in place before unpacking base-files, that
would be allowed (as far as everything else works, that is).

> and it also shouldn't be a symbolic link but rather a regular file.

No. In jessie, it's a symlink. This is explained in the changelog for
base-files 7.4.

Diddier Hilarion wrote:

> //Unpacking base-files (8+deb8u4) ...//
> //dpkg: error processing archive
> /var/cache/apt/archives/base-files_8+deb8u4_arm64.deb (--install)://
> // symbolic link '/etc/os-release' size has changed from 50 to 21//

The right size is 21 indeed (it's the number of chars in the destination,
i.e. "../usr/lib/os-release") so I wonder where the 50 comes from.

[Diddier Hilarion]

I had the exact same error when I did it with armel. The problem was I
was using a ntfs filesystem as the base for the debootstrap, so i guess
that caused a problem related to fs permissions.

I did the process again in my root fs (ext4) and all went excelent.
Thanks for your help.