#1136504 freeradius uses pidof but does not depend on procps

#1136504#5
Date:
2026-05-13 23:27:50 UTC
From:
To:
Dear maintainer(s) of freeradius,

it appears that freeradius uses `pidof` in its testsuite, or that
at least one of its binary packages uses `pidof` at runtime.
Historically, `pidof` was provided by the Essential package
`sysvinit-tools`, making an explicit dependency unnecessary. However
`pidof` will soon be moved to `procps` and will no longer be part of
the Essential set.

Please add an explicit dependency on `procps`:

* via the `Depends:` field of all binary packages of freeradius
  that use `pidof` at runtime;
* via the `Build-Depends:` field of freeradius, if `pidof` is
  used in tests run at build-time;
* via the `Depends:` field of `debian/control/tests`, if `pidof` is
  used in autopkgtests.

To prevent any disruption for users of freeradius, please add
this dependency now, before `pidof` is moved from `sysvinit-utils` to
`procps`. Alternatively, you could remove all uses of `pidof`.

It is believed that freeradius uses `pidof` due to the following
code snippets:

```
path: freeradius_3.2.8+dfsg-1/debian/tests/daemon
service freeradius restart
if pidof -x $DAEMON > /dev/null; then
    echo "OK"
else
```

Feel free to close this issue if this is a false positive (for example
if this code is in an unreachable code path).

Regards,