pip uninstall removes "/var/*"

[ushkinaz]

This is kinda critical.

I installed the plugin, then decided to reinstall it. Soon after the host I was doing it on collapsed.
Investigating the issue uncovered that "pip uninstall" removed everything under "/var"
See screenshot

[gmr]

What version of pip? This is pretty strange, I've not run into it.

[ushkinaz]

centos 6.4
python 2.6.5
pip 1.3.1

[ushkinaz]

distribute 0.6.45

[gmr]

Thanks, I'll try and replicate.

[ushkinaz]

Another bit of extra info, installed-files.txt for egg has following content:

Sorry for screenshots and not text, our extra-paranoid sysadmin unplugged that host from network, and I'm only able to take screenshots from VMWare console.

[ccooper21]

My team has encountered this same issue and unfortunately lost three servers in the process.

In trying to investigate further, I found this issue raised against the "pip" project apparently describing the same problem. The issue was subsequently passed off to the "distribute" project by raising this issue, which is still open.

Irrespective of whether the root cause of this problem is due to a defect in another project, it would be nice to make the necessary changes to this project such that others don't experience the same surprise. Apparently this is caused by empty file lists getting passed to the "data_files" argument of the "setup(...)" function called in the "setup.py" file.

For anyone who is interested, my fork contains a tentative fix for this issue. I have asked one of my team members to validate the fix. If all is well, I'll submit a pull request for the change.

[gmr]

I apologize for the trouble and appreciate the patch.

[gmr]

Can you submit this as a pull request please?

[ccooper21]

No worries. The pull request has been submitted.

[a13x212]

When will this change be in a release? I just ran into the same issue.

[gmr]

1.0.13 will be "very soon"

[davidsteinsland]

Although this bug has been fixed, we'd appreciate some kind of warning. Thru NewRelic, you know who's got the plugin installed, and from there you should send out an alert. Today we just lost our production server, and has probably lost several hours of work (thank God for backups, at least).

Shame on you!

[gmr]

NewRelic did send a warning to every account that installed it. Sorry that you lost your server and the work involved to recover it.