[yocto] [pseudo] Pseudo 1.8+ xattr sqlite corruption

[Jack.Fewx at dell.com]

We are encountering a build problem after migrating to Poky 2.3 and Pseudo 1.8.1, and need help to resolve this.
It is hampering our development efforts, forcing us to rebuild images frequently.

Background:
Our build applies SELinux file contexts, during build time since our rootfs is read-only
In Poky 2.0, using Pseudo 1.6.2 this works perfectly 100% of the time

Problem:
Since the upgrade to 2.3 there is a 33%+ chance that the SELinux context labels will be corrupt at the end of the build.
The chance is random.  Cleaning and Rebuilding a bad image target results in success/failure of equal likelihood. We can go days without an error, or like this weekend all 12 builds failed!

Failure mode:
We have learned to identify the failure and mark builds bad based on the contents of the Pseudo SQLite database generated by the image build.

A good build will have unique Inode to xattr references in the "xattrs" table.  We prove pass/fail by doing a query of All entries and unique entries and verify the counts match.
Example of a good result, sorted by "ino":
Id		dev		ino		name			value
"1"		"64773"	"251402120"	"security.selinux"	system_u:object_r:root_t
"10012"	"64773"	"251402121"	"security.selinux"	system_u:object_r:var_t
"7293"		"64773"	"251402124"	"security.selinux"	system_u:object_r:lib_t
"19"		"64773"	"251402133"	"security.selinux"	system_u:object_r:var_run_t

On a bad build, there will be numerous duplicates in this table.  Why this causes the failure I do not know, but this is just what we found is indicative to failure without flashing the image on something.
Example of a bad result, again sorted by "ino":

Id		dev	ino		name			value
"10067"	"45"	"2293256211"	"security.selinux"	system_u:object_r:usr_t
"31918"	"45"	"2293256211"	"security.selinux"	system_u:object_r:usr_t
"59307"	"45"	"2293256211"	"security.selinux"	system_u:object_r:usr_t
"61317"	"45"	"2293256211"	"security.selinux"	system_u:object_r:usr_t
"61737"	"45"	"2293256211"	"security.selinux"	system_u:object_r:usr_t
"61793"	"45"	"2293256211"	"security.selinux"	system_u:object_r:usr_t
"11849"	"45"	"2293250079"	"security.selinux"	system_u:object_r:var_spool_t
"66928"	"45"	"2293250079"	"security.selinux"	system_u:object_r:var_spool_t
"66948"	"45"	"2293250079"	"security.selinux"	system_u:object_r:var_spool_t

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Jack Fewx
Software Senior Principal Engineer
Dell EMC | Server and Infrastructure Systems
jack_fewx at dell.com