Bug 921040

Summary: "error: external command failed, see earlier error messages" message needs to change
Product: [Community] Virtualization Tools Reporter: Richard W.M. Jones <rjones>
Component: libguestfsAssignee: Richard W.M. Jones <rjones>
Status: CLOSED UPSTREAM QA Contact:
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Version: unspecifiedCC: dyasny, mbooth
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Last Closed: 2013-03-13 18:35:45 UTC Type: Bug
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Description Richard W.M. Jones 2013-03-13 11:07:24 UTC
Description of problem:

There are a number of places where external commands are
run and on failure you get an error message like this:

*stdin*:4: libguestfs: error: external command failed, see earlier error messages

This message is confusing because:

(a) It doesn't tell you which external command failed.
(b) It doesn't say what we were trying to do.
(c) If debugging is not enabled, it is inaccurate -- there aren't
    any "earlier error messages"!

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

libguestfs 1.20.4

How reproducible:

100%

Steps to Reproduce:

On Debian (which has old febootstrap), unpack libguestfs-1.20.4.tar.gz
and ./configure && make && make check.

It will fail with the line above, and no earlier error messages.

If you enable debugging then you'll see it's actually failing when
running febootstrap.

Comment 1 Richard W.M. Jones 2013-03-13 18:35:45 UTC
Fixed upstream in:
https://github.com/libguestfs/libguestfs/commit/1b644ad64eb9b9c1d6e97953b98c8c00559bf37d