Subject: autopkgtest-build-qemu 5.13.1 always fails without $AUTOPKGTEST_APT_SOURCES_FILE

From: Ryutaroh Matsumoto <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 May 2020 17:05:25 +0900 (JST)

Package: autopkgtest
Version: 5.13.1
Severity: minor

Dear Maintainer,

Without $AUTOPKGTEST_APT_SOURCES_FILE,
autopkgtest-build-qemu 5.13.1 fails with

ERROR: Command failed: sh -c /usr/share/autopkgtest/setup-commands/setup-testbed $ROOT
b''
b'Generating grub configuration file ...\nFound linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-4.19.0-9-amd64\nFound initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-4.19.0-9-amd64\nFound Devuan GNU/Linux 3 (beowulf) on /dev/sda1\ndone\n/usr/share/autopkgtest/setup-commands/setup-testbed: Attempting to set up Debian/Ubuntu apt sources automatically\nFailed to auto-detect distribution release name; set $RELEASE explicitly\n'

Setting $AUTOPKGTEST_APT_SOURCES_FILE to a suitable source.list
works around this issue.
This is NOT observed in autopkgtest 5.10.

Best regards, Ryutaroh Matsumoto

-- System Information:
Distributor ID:	Debian
Description:	Devuan GNU/Linux 3 (beowulf)
Release:	3
Codename:	beowulf
Architecture: x86_64

Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-9-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=ja_JP.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=ja_JP.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages autopkgtest depends on:
ii  apt-utils       1.8.2.1
ii  libdpkg-perl    1.19.7
ii  procps          2:3.3.15-2+devuan1
ii  python3         3.7.3-1
ii  python3-debian  0.1.35

Versions of packages autopkgtest recommends:
ii  autodep8  0.18

Versions of packages autopkgtest suggests:
pn  lxc               <none>
pn  lxd               <none>
ii  ovmf              0~20181115.85588389-3+deb10u1
pn  qemu-efi-aarch64  <none>
pn  qemu-efi-arm      <none>
pn  qemu-system       <none>
ii  qemu-utils        1:3.1+dfsg-8+deb10u5
pn  schroot           <none>
ii  vmdb2             0.13.2+git20190215-1

-- no debconf information