aptitude stops displaying downloads

It seems to stop displaying when it starts showing speed & remaining time!

Seems only to occur when the gnome-terminal window is maximized

Changing the Fixed width font to Monospace 8pt in gnome-appearance-properties makes this happen it seems ! (and ofcouse gnome-terminal is set to use the default)

After some debugging @ #Ubuntu+1, the real reason seems to be the column count: columns 316;

Colums > 312 break the output
Colums <= 312 are just fine

Actually it stops once the speed indiator on the bottom right side appears.

diff -ru aptitude/src/generic/apt/acqprogress.cc aptitude-0.4.11.11/src/generic/apt/acqprogress.cc
--- aptitude/src/generic/apt/acqprogress.cc 2009-10-19 23:42:25.937618128 +0200
+++ aptitude-0.4.11.11/src/generic/apt/acqprogress.cc 2008-11-20 04:17:12.000000000 +0100
@@ -256,7 +256,7 @@

    if (CurrentCPS != 0)
    {
- char Tmp[400];
+ char Tmp[300];
       unsigned long ETA = (unsigned long)((TotalBytes - CurrentBytes)/CurrentCPS);
       sprintf(Tmp," %sB/s %s",SizeToStr(CurrentCPS).c_str(),TimeToStr(ETA).c_str());
       unsigned int Len = strlen(Buffer);
diff -ru aptitude/src/generic/apt/acqprogress.h aptitude-0.4.11.11/src/generic/apt/acqprogress.h
--- aptitude/src/generic/apt/acqprogress.h 2009-10-20 19:48:33.625307969 +0200
+++ aptitude-0.4.11.11/src/generic/apt/acqprogress.h 2008-11-20 04:17:12.000000000 +0100
@@ -20,7 +20,7 @@
 class AcqTextStatus : public sigc::trackable
 {
    unsigned int &ScreenWidth;
- char BlankLine[400];
+ char BlankLine[300];
    unsigned long ID;
    unsigned long Quiet;

this fixes the bug!

This bug was fixed in the package aptitude - 0.4.11.11-1ubuntu9

---------------
aptitude (0.4.11.11-1ubuntu9) lucid; urgency=low

  * 13_screensize.dpatch:
     - Fixes a bug that stops outputting aptitude downloads on big screens (LP: #391035).
 -- Jean-Louis Dupond <email address hidden> Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:42:30 +0100

I'm getting segfaults in any aptitude operation as of 0.4.11.11-1ubuntu9; reverting to an older version gets things working again.

This patch is wrong. This needs to be ScreenWidth + 1, not ScreenWidth:
+ BlankLine = new char[ScreenWidth];
because otherwise acqprogress.cc:273 overflows the buffer:
   BlankLine[ScreenWidth] = 0;

In addition, the patch has a more subtle problem. ScreenWidth is an int _reference_, that points to unsigned int screen_width in cmdline_progress.cc, which can be updated at any time from the SIGWINCH signal handler. This would lead to a buffer overflow if the window size is increased.

Moving the fallout discussion to bug 515525, where I’ve posted a fixed patch.