ES 1.0.2 debian package fails on removing dirs when purged

[XANi]

Purging package doesn't work in any way:

When /var/lib/elasticsearch exists and is a directory, it tries to rmdir /var/lib

(Reading database ... 159672 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing elasticsearch (1.0.2) ...
rmdir: failed to remove directory '/var/lib'
dpkg: error processing package elasticsearch (--purge):
 subprocess installed post-removal script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 elasticsearch
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:
Press Return to continue.

When /var/lib/elasticsearch doesn't exist, it tries to remove it and fails:

(Reading database ... 159672 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing elasticsearch (1.0.2) ...
rmdir: failed to remove '/var/lib/elasticsearch': No such file or directory
dpkg: error processing package elasticsearch (--purge):
 subprocess installed post-removal script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 elasticsearch
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:
Press Return to continue.

When /var/lib/elasticsearch is a mounted partition, it tries to remove dir and fails at it:

(Reading database ... 159672 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing elasticsearch (1.0.2) ...
rmdir: failed to remove '/var/lib/elasticsearch'
dpkg: error processing package elasticsearch (--purge):
 subprocess installed post-removal script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 elasticsearch
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
A package failed to install.  Trying to recover:
Press Return to continue.

It also should probably do same stuff *DB packages do: ask if you want to keep your data when purging package

[spinscale]

Hey,

what linux distribution did you try this on. The only call in question in the prerm script is

rmdir -p --ignore-fail-on-non-empty /var/lib/elasticsearch

Agreed, the -p parameter does not make a lot of sense. But apart from that you should not get any invalid error message, except that the --ignore-fail-on-non-empty is somehow ignored... can you try on the commandline, if it works?

[XANi]

It was install->uninstall on debian wheezy/sid (i installed 1.0.2 and realized I need older version so I purged it)

"failed to remove directory '/var/lib'" only occurs when directory above (in my case /var/lib) is also a mount:

☠ mount | grep lib
/dev/mapper/rootvg-lib on /var/lib type xfs (rw,noatime,attr2,inode64,noquota)
/dev/mapper/rootvg-collectd on /var/lib/collectd type reiserfs (rw,noatime)
/dev/mapper/rootvg-elasticsearch on /var/lib/elasticsearch type xfs (rw,noatime,attr2,inode64,sunit=1024,swidth=2048,noquota)
☠ mkdir /usr/test; rmdir -p --ignore-fail-on-non-empty /usr/test
☠ mkdir /var/lib/test; rmdir -p --ignore-fail-on-non-empty /var/lib/test
rmdir: failed to remove directory '/var/lib'

but that is basically a bug in rmdir, it should just return silently, instead:

mkdir /asd;rmdir -p /asd
rmdir: failed to remove directory '/': Device or resource busy

and it's some old bug, as I see same behaviour on old centos 5 systems

It works if directory exists but it will fail if it is a mounted partition.

It will also fail if directory was already removed (like admin first removing mount ,then purging package).

I think just ignoring exit code of rmdir should be fine.

[spinscale]

great explanation, thanks for digging into this.. so removing -p and ignoring the error seems the way to go.

[XANi]

-p only works well when used with relative paths.

If you want to clean up empty dirs,

find /tmp/dir -type d -empty  -delete

works much better, but still exit code have to be handled/ignored

[t-lo]

With #7078 merged does the issue still exist?

[spinscale]

@t-lo you are right, this should be fixed. Closing.