Hi,

given the following code in a maintainer script:

postinst
if [ -x "/usr/bin/deb-systemd-helper" ]; then
        deb-systemd-helper mask 'sudo.service' || true
fi

postrm
case "$1" in
  purge)
        if [ -x "/usr/bin/deb-systemd-helper" ]; then
                deb-systemd-helper unmask 'sudo.service' || true
        fi

the masking symlink stays around after purge. When the package is
installed, ther is no sudo.service marker file in /var/lib/systemd/deb-systemd-helper-masked/

dpkg/deb-systemd-helper output from package installation:

root@salida:~# dpkg --list sudo
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version      Architecture Description
+++-==============-============-============-=================================
un  sudo           <none>       <none>       (no description available)
root@salida:~# dpkg --install /home/mh/packages/sudo/build-area/sudo_1.9.8p2-2~1_amd64.deb
Selecting previously unselected package sudo.
(Reading database ... 42180 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack .../sudo_1.9.8p2-2~1_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking sudo (1.9.8p2-2~1) ...
Setting up sudo (1.9.8p2-2~1) ...
(deb-systemd-helper DEBUG) is purge = no
(deb-systemd-helper DEBUG) action = mask, scriptname = sudo.service, service_path = sudo.service
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.33-3) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.9.4-4) ...
root@salida:~# ls -la /var/lib/systemd/deb-systemd-helper-masked/
total 8
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4096 Jan  5 21:55 .
drwxr-xr-x 11 root root 4096 Jan  5 21:55 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    0 Jan  5 21:55 systemd-timesyncd.service
root@salida:~#

dpkg/deb-systemd-helper output from package purge:

root@salida:~# dpkg --purge sudo
(Reading database ... 42313 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing sudo (1.9.8p2-2~1) ...
Purging configuration files for sudo (1.9.8p2-2~1) ...
(deb-systemd-helper DEBUG) is purge = no
(deb-systemd-helper DEBUG) action = unmask, scriptname = sudo.service, service_path = sudo.service
(deb-systemd-helper DEBUG) Not unmasking /etc/systemd/system/sudo.service because the state file /var/lib/systemd/deb-systemd-helper-masked/sudo.service does not exist
(deb-systemd-helper DEBUG) rmdir_if_empty /var/lib/systemd/deb-systemd-helper-masked
(deb-systemd-helper DEBUG) rmdir(/var/lib/systemd/deb-systemd-helper-masked) failed (Directory not empty)
(deb-systemd-helper DEBUG) rmdir_if_empty /var/lib/systemd/deb-systemd-user-helper-masked
(deb-systemd-helper DEBUG) rmdir(/var/lib/systemd/deb-systemd-user-helper-masked) failed (No such file or directory)
dpkg: warning: while removing sudo, directory '/etc/sudoers.d' not empty so not removed
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.33-3) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.9.4-4) ...
root@salida:~# ls -al /etc/systemd/system/sudo.service
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Jan 23 23:25 /etc/systemd/system/sudo.service -> /dev/null
root@salida:~#

What is going wrong here?

Greetings
Marc

retitle -1 please consider more debugging in state file handling
severity -1 minor
thanks

Turns out that it was an issue in the test system.

Please, however, consider adding a bit more debugging and error
processing. Here is the patch that I used to debug this. This is clearly
not suitable for the release code, but I think you get the idea

--- /usr/bin/deb-systemd-helper 2021-11-01 15:05:55.000000000 +0100
+++ /home/mh/deb-systemd-helper 2022-01-25 00:14:53.235498204 +0100
@@ -464,12 +464,17 @@

     my $statefile = $mask_link;
     $statefile =~ s,^/etc/systemd/$instance/,$masked_state_dir/,;
+    debug "statefile $statefile.";

     # Store the fact that we masked this service, so that we can unmask it on
     # installation time. We cannot unconditionally unmask because that would
     # interfere with the user’s decision to mask a service.
-    make_path(dirname($statefile));
-    open(my $fh, '>>', $statefile);
+    debug "dirname statefile ". dirname($statefile);
+    system("ls -l ". dirname($statefile));
+    if (! -e dirname($statefile)) {
+        make_path(dirname($statefile)) or die "cannot make_path: $!";
+    }
+    open(my $fh, '>>', $statefile) or die "cannot open: $!";
     close($fh);
 }

Retitling and resetting severity.

Greetings
Marc

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