Bug#1021829: synaptic: APT::Default-Release still confusing with synaptic

[Kay Martinen]

Package: synaptic
Version: 0.84.6
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

i always use stable and often Synaptic as Packetmanager. And on this actual
machine i installed and upgraded Debian but at some point synaptic won't start
anymore.

It said APT::Default-Release "Stable-Updates" is invalid. But what it DID NOT
say is from where this setting is coming.
I tried to find it in /etc/apt but nothing found. And just after some web
searching i found only ONE Post that explained a synaptic.conf in root's
directory.

This is weird because i have to key in my user password if i start synaptic as
user (sudoed) and expected such a file in my home or in /etc/apt - but not in
root's own dir.

So, from a user's perspective Synaptic shut's down after the error message
window and is no longer usable. For nothing. Making it an important bug i
guess.

I deleted the /root/.synaptic Folder and Synaptic is working again. I don't
know how or from what this "stable-updates" entry is coming. I believe i did
not set it but it must be done by anything. I only have the Trouble to make
this work again. Because synaptic did not tell me in which file it founds a
problematic entry. This is my suggestion that synaptic should tell the path and
filename of the error.

BTW. I tried to set a correct value in a new /etc/apt/apt.conf but then
synaptic tells my bogus content at the end of file and... the filename. Why not
everytime?



-- System Information:
Debian Release: 10.13
APT prefers oldstable-updates
APT policy: (500, 'oldstable-updates'), (500, 'oldstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-22-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE= (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages synaptic depends on:
ii hicolor-icon-theme 0.17-2
ii libapt-inst2.0 1.8.2.3
ii libapt-pkg5.0 1.8.2.3
ii libatk1.0-0 2.30.0-2
ii libc6 2.28-10+deb10u1
ii libcairo-gobject2 1.16.0-4+deb10u1
ii libcairo2 1.16.0-4+deb10u1
ii libept1.5.0 1.1+nmu3+b1
ii libgcc1 1:8.3.0-6
ii libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 2.38.1+dfsg-1
ii libglib2.0-0 2.58.3-2+deb10u4
ii libgnutls30 3.6.7-4+deb10u9
ii libgtk-3-0 3.24.5-1
ii libpango-1.0-0 1.42.4-8~deb10u1
ii libpangocairo-1.0-0 1.42.4-8~deb10u1
ii libpcre2-8-0 10.32-5
ii libstdc++6 8.3.0-6
ii libvte-2.91-0 0.54.2-2
ii libx11-6 2:1.6.7-1+deb10u2
ii libxapian30 1.4.11-1
ii policykit-1 0.105-25+deb10u1
ii zenity 3.30.0-2
ii zlib1g 1:1.2.11.dfsg-1+deb10u2

Versions of packages synaptic recommends:
ii libgtk2-perl 2:1.24992-1+b2
ii xdg-utils 1.1.3-1+deb10u1

Versions of packages synaptic suggests:
pn apt-xapian-index <none>
pn deborphan <none>
pn dwww <none>
pn menu <none>
pn software-properties-gtk <none>
ii tasksel 3.53

-- no debconf information