How to determine which errors are fatal from "Some items failed to download. Downloaded data may be incomplete"?

[barrettc]

Hi there, I'm running into a similar issue as this one with Ubuntu 20.04. I'm trying to run apt-offline in the context of a script and the apt-offline get operation reports a non-zero exit code. When I take the generated bundle to the disconnected machine, I see that I'm able to install my packages correctly so the errors being reported are not true problems. I'm trying to figure out how I can determine which of the missing translation errors are actual problems and which can be ignored so I can handle this in my script. I'll show the verbose output from what I'm seeing - thanks for any help.

apt-offline set:

apt-offline set --verbose /home/bc/.larry/nuc1.sig --update --install-packages net-tools nfs-common
VERBOSE: Namespace(apt_backend='apt-get', func=<function setter at 0x7f1cdbbdf4c0>, generate_changelog=False, set='/home/bc/.larry/nuc1.sig', set_install_packages=['net-tools', 'nfs-common'], set_install_release=None, set_install_src_packages=None, set_simulate=False, set_update=True, set_upgrade=False, src_build_dep=False, upgrade_type='upgrade', verbose=True)
VERBOSE: APT Update Method is of type: apt-get
Gathering details needed for 'update' operation
VERBOSE: Command is: ['/usr/bin/apt-get', '-q', '--print-uris', 'update']
VERBOSE: Calling __FixAptSigs to fix the apt sig problemVERBOSE: APT Install Method is of type: apt-get
Gathering installation details for package ['net-tools', 'nfs-common']
VERBOSE: Command is: ['/usr/bin/apt-get', '-qq', '--print-uris', 'install', 'net-tools', 'nfs-common']

Attached the apt-offline get operation output as a txt file. apt-offline-get.txt

[barrettc]

After some more digging, I realized that the version of apt-offline installed with apt and Ubuntu 20.04 is 1.8.2. I used dpkg to manually install a .deb version of 1.8.5 and my problem went away. So I suppose this is a workaround for now as I'm stuck on Ubuntu 20.04 for this project.

[rickysarraf]

The translation files not being available is not a fatal problem; which is why we don't bail out on those errors. But given they are errors still, we shouldn't suppress them, which is why we report that those payloads failed.

Similarly, consider of the 100 .debs being downloaded, one failed. We can't abort on it just for that failure. Which is why we report the user of the failure and still complete the overall operation.

As to what all failed, it can be ascertained by running the same operations in --verbose mode.

[barrettc]

I understand what you're saying but when one of the non-fatal files are encountered, the process ends with a non-zero exit code making it difficult to create automation with. Is it possible to exit with some sort of special code like "2" to indicate that there were problems downloading some files but the error should be considered non-fatal?

[rickysarraf]

Currently, it exits with error code 100 here:

https://github.com/rickysarraf/apt-offline/blob/05e3ed76b3ee2268a1a14c398802249ef96120e9/apt_offline_core/AptOfflineCoreLib.py#L1499-L1507

But errlist is a list to which all failures are appended. Differentiating error types on the basis of source is not being handled.

You could use the same error code 100 but please beware that even the .deb failures fall under the common errors.

https://github.com/rickysarraf/apt-offline/blob/05e3ed76b3ee2268a1a14c398802249ef96120e9/apt_offline_core/AptOfflineCoreLib.py#L1300-L1345

[rickysarraf]

Is it possible to exit with some sort of special code like "2" to indicate that there were problems downloading some files but the error should be considered non-fatal?

I haven't fully validated but looking at the code, it seems that is what it does.