FS#53911 - pacman lets you update packages when /tmp is full, potentially bricking your system

Attached to Project: Pacman
Opened by Nate Graham (pointedstick) - Tuesday, 02 May 2017, 13:56 GMT
Last edited by Allan McRae (Allan) - Wednesday, 03 May 2017, 00:04 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Core
Status Closed
Assigned To No-one
Architecture x86_64
Severity Critical
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

Description:
I was using Octopi (a frontend to pacman) on Manjaro with KDE Plasma, and got a notification that there were some packages that needed updating, so I opened Octopi and let it update them. To my horror, the output tab started filling up with "out of space" messages, but the packages didn't stop trying to install or revert to a safe state. Out of morbid curiosity, I rebooted and was confronted with an unbootable system--apparently the postinstall processes for some package that regenerates the initramfs had died. Bummer.

pacman shouldn't let you update packages if /tmp is full or below some large safe threshold.

I originally filed this against Octopi (https://github.com/aarnt/octopi/issues/231#event-1064747293), but was informed that it's a bug in pacman itself, so here I am.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Allan McRae (Allan)
Wednesday, 03 May 2017, 00:04 GMT
Reason for closing:  Deferred
Additional comments about closing:  Need detailed information to track this down.
Comment by Allan McRae (Allan) - Tuesday, 02 May 2017, 15:34 GMT
Do you have your upgrade log? What packages were hitting /tmp?
Comment by Nate Graham (pointedstick) - Tuesday, 02 May 2017, 15:35 GMT
I'm afraid I don't. I moved back to another distro as a result of this and other bugs, but I wanted to report them anyway.
Comment by Allan McRae (Allan) - Tuesday, 02 May 2017, 21:15 GMT
There is practically nothing we can do from a pacman perspective there. Pacman's CheckSpace option will check /tmp if package files are being extracted there, but this sounds like something running a post_install script caused /tmp to be filled. We have no way of knowing what packages will do there, so this becomes is more of a distribution packaging problem than a pacman one. Without any details of which packages were involved, I'm not sure there is anything to be done...
Comment by Nate Graham (pointedstick) - Tuesday, 02 May 2017, 22:21 GMT
Darn. Well, if I ever see it again, I'll be sure to gather more logs and information.

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