Debian Lenny has more software as the rest or the world [WAS: Bug#516303: apt downloaded (or created?) a 10 gigabyte diffindex file

----- Forwarded message from Richard Kettlewell <[email protected]> -----

Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:05:31 +0000
From: Richard Kettlewell <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Bug#516303: apt downloaded (or created?) a 10 gigabyte diffindex file
X-PTS-Package: apt
X-Debian-PR-Package: apt

Package: apt
Version: 0.7.20.2

Yesterday apt-get update either downloaded, or created, a 10Gbyte  
diffindex file.  Apparently it only stopped because it filled up /var,  
which broke some services running on the same system.

richard@araminta:/var/lib/apt/lists/partial$ ls -l
total 9242292
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root        386 2009-02-14 14:07  
ftp.uk.debian.org_debian_dists_lenny_Release.gpg.reverify
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root       2879 2009-02-18 08:38  
ftp.uk.debian.org_debian_dists_unstable_main_binary-amd64_Packages.diff_2009-02-18-0837.56
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root        189 2009-02-18 02:42  
ftp.uk.debian.org_debian_dists_unstable_Release.gpg.reverify
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9446486016 2009-02-19 07:38  
http.us.debian.org_debian_dists_lenny_main_binary-amd64_Packages.DiffIndex
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root        386 2009-02-14 14:07  
http.us.debian.org_debian_dists_lenny_Release.gpg.reverify
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    5670002 2009-02-13 02:02  
http.us.debian.org_debian_dists_unstable_main_binary-amd64_Packages
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    2659686 2009-02-13 02:16  
http.us.debian.org_debian_dists_unstable_main_source_Sources
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root        189 2009-02-18 02:42  
http.us.debian.org_debian_dists_unstable_Release.gpg.reverify
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root        189 2009-02-15 15:23  
security.debian.org_dists_lenny_updates_Release.gpg.reverify

You can see this underway in a snapshot of my MRTG output too:

http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/junk/araminta_var-day.png

I'm afraid I don't know if it was the mirror or apt going haywire.  Even  
if it was the mirror then perhaps apt ought to have some kind of sanity  
check to avoid downloading unreasonably large amounts of data (if  
'unreasonably large' can be sensibly defined).

A subsequent hand run of 'apt-get update' doesn't show this behavior.

ttfn/rjk




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