What are the risks of installing a “bad quality” package? [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
What is a “bad quality” package?

When I try to install sonic-visualiser_1.9cc-1_amd64.deb via the Software Center the following warning message is displayed:

The package is of bad quality

The installation of a package which violates the quality standards isn't allowed. This could cause serious problems on your computer. Please contact the person or organisation who provided this package file and include the details beneath.

Lintian check results for /home/ak/Downloads/sonic-visualiser_1.9cc-1_amd64.deb:
Use of uninitialized value $ENV{"HOME"} in concatenation (.) or string at /usr/bin/lintian line 108.
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/ 1000/1000
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/bin/ 1000/1000
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/bin/sonic-visualiser 1000/1000
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/share/ 1000/1000
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/share/applications/ 1000/1000
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/share/applications/sonic-visualiser.desktop 1000/1000
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/share/doc/ 1000/1000
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/share/doc/sonic-visualiser/ 1000/1000
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/share/doc/sonic-visualiser/CHANGELOG 1000/1000
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/share/doc/sonic-visualiser/COPYING 1000/1000
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/share/doc/sonic-visualiser/README 1000/1000
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/share/mimelnk/ 1000/1000
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/share/mimelnk/application/ 1000/1000
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/share/mimelnk/application/x-sonicvisualiser-layer.desktop 1000/1000
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/share/mimelnk/application/x-sonicvisualiser.desktop 1000/1000
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/share/pixmaps/ 1000/1000
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/share/pixmaps/sv-icon-light.svg 1000/1000
E: sonic-visualiser: wrong-file-owner-uid-or-gid usr/share/pixmaps/sv-icon.svg 1000/1000

I understand that this means the package doesn't meet Debian policy and I know how to override the warning and install the package anyway.

What are the risks of doing so?

Answer 1

As you already found out the "bad quality" error of USC helps to pick non-standard packages and to warn you about them not entirely meeting the Debian policy. Again, you already found a way to see what might be wrong with the package. It is a good idea to check the package before installing it with lintian. That exactly is what the Software Center does too:

lintian name_of_package.deb

You will then see errors (E) or warnings (W) that indiciate what exactly are the weaknesses of your package the Software Center complains about. In the example case above it is the file permissions set to a wrong user or group ID. In case the package does not replace system files this should not affect your overall system stability and thus is unlikely to be a risk to your installation. However wrong permission may be a cause of a newly installed application not running as expected.

A "bad quality package" most probably does not affect your overall system stability or break your system. This is even less so when you trust your source. There even is a list maintained by Debian that shows occurences of Lintian tags in packages from the Debian archives.

Nevertheless it is a good idea to find out what exactly is wrong before we install such a package. This will also help you filing a bug report to give packaging people a chance to fix it.

Answer 2

Your System might break. After installing the package the system may not start properly or some components in the system might not function as expected