I am toying around with some Ubuntu 20 clients and Atix’s work on Katello support for Debian packages. I have synchronized the Ubuntu repository into Katello and can install some binary packages for the client’s architecture (amd64); however I have no success with installing packages for the “all” architecture (Debian’s equivalent of .noarch in RPM-land)…
Client view:
$ sudo apt search mailutils-common
Sorting... Done
Full Text Search... Done
Pulp on the Katello server knows about the package, though:
I can install architecture “all” packages on my Ubuntu 20 test system though I may be using a somewhat different version of pulp_deb.
One thing that might make sense, just to cover your bases is to run apt-get update on the Ubuntu host, just to check if that changes anything.
Assuming that is not it, can you verify the following:
On your Ubuntu, there should be /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rhsm.sources, which should contain all the repositories provided to the system by subscription-manager. In this file you should be able to find the baseurl of the repository form which you cant install architecture=“all” packages. If you open this baseurl in a browser (make sure you add a trailing / if missing), you can navigate to the dists/default/ folder. In this folder there should be Release files (either Release or InRelease or both). These files should contain a line that starts with Architectures: and this line should contain at least the values all and amd64. Is this the case?
You can also check the /dists/default/all/binary-all/Packages file, if the expected package is listed in this file. If this is also the case, then Ubuntu really should be able to install the package…
One thing that might make sense, just to cover your bases is to run apt-get update on the Ubuntu host, just to check if that changes anything.
I had updated the Apt cache before, but just now did so again to make sure. Didn’t make any difference, unfortunately.
In this folder there should be Release files (either Release or InRelease or both). These files should contain a line that starts with Architectures: and this line should contain at least the values all and amd64. Is this the case?
You can also check the /dists/default/all/binary-all/Packages file, if the expected package is listed in this file. If this is also the case, then Ubuntu really should be able to install the package…
$ sudo apt install mailutils-common
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package mailutils-common is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package 'mailutils-common' has no installation candidate
This is pretty strange. The repository format your Ubuntu host is getting looks correct to me, but clearly apt is somehow not seeing the package. Just so I can better compare with my test host, can you post the output of lsb_release -a and apt --version?
There is a possibility that some old apt versions, don’t know how to deal with the latest architecture all repo metadata structure which is used by your version of Pulp/Katello, however I have never actually seen this happen anywhere in the wild…
As far as I can tell I have the exact same setup, but I can install architecture “all” packages on it.
I will pass this along to QA to see if they can reproduce it, but for now I am out of ideas.
But so far I have considered this more of a theoretical issue since I have never actually seen it cause problems, and it appears to work on my own test system.
Updated the emtpy download policy to “immediate”, resync’ed repositories, republished content views, cleared client cache, re-subscribed client system, and lo and behold
$ sudo apt search mailutils-common
Sorting... Done
Full Text Search... Done
mailutils-common/unknown 1:3.7-2.1 all
common files for GNU mailutils
$ sudo apt install mailutils-common
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
mailutils-common
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
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