Hi,

I am really sorry having to file this.

When a package uses adduser --system without explicitly specifying the
home directory of the new user, its home directory gets set to
/home/$USER. Debian QA thinks that this is a policy violation and
supports this by bending FHS
http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/fhs/fhs-2.3.html#HOMEUSERHOMEDIRECTORIES
which says:

"/home : User home directories (optional)"
"/home is a fairly standard concept, but it is clearly a site-specific
filesystem. The setup will differ from host to host. Therefore, no
program should rely on this location."

Thus, packages using adduser --system and relying on adduser doing the
right thing will get a piuparts-based RC bug in no time. Adduser
should change its default behavior to something that QA will accept.

Greetings
Marc

This one time, at band camp, Marc Haber said:

And what directory would that be, then?

I think this is a strange interpretation of policy, that it's the tool
that is buggy and not the invocation.

Cheers,

Since policy does not give any hints about that, adduser --system
should probably insist on --home being given.

Greetings
Marc

Hi,

actually, this isn't completely true. The home directory gets set to
/$DHOME/$USER where DHOME is a configuration variable found in
/etc/adduser.conf . I think that the site-specific nature of the base
directory for user home directories gets preserved through this DHOME
variable. It should be the responsibility of the system administrator to
keep this variable in sync with the base directory he wants for his home
directories. Isn't it?

Cheers,

Hi,

This one time, at band camp, Marc Haber said:

I think I'd like to summarize, if I may:

Policy says packages can't rely on the layout of /home/
Some packages invoke adduser --system without the switch --home
In this case, adduser creates a user with $HOME under /home/

There is so far no evidence that these packages rely on the presence of
that directory

You think this is a release-critical bug in adduser

You have filed this as we freeze

Congratulations.

Now, I don't agree that this is a bug in adduser - I think this is a bug
in packages invoking adduser.  I think the right way to do this is a
mass bug filing on those packages.

Your suggestion of a 'fix' makes lots of packages insta-buggy, which is
effectively the same as a mass bug-filing.

So, unless you can give me compelling arguments that this is actually
adduser's problem to solve, I'd like you to talk about your prospective
mass bug-filing on -devel.

Cheers,

Your argumentation, the personal attacks set aside, is sound. Please
downgrade at will.

If I were still active in adduser development, I'd probably,
post-wheezy, let adduser emit a warning when adduser --system is
invoked either without --home, or a --home /home option.

Greetings
Marc

Hi,

Since some packages do not seem to care about their home directory, and
putting system directories under /home is “obviously” never the answer:

Perhaps adduser --system invocations should default to --home /nonexistent
--no-create-home if no --home option was supplied by the invoking
script/user.

Kind regards,

* Stephen Gran (sgran@debian.org) [120702 13:25]:

Question now is how bad is "directory created unter /home" really. Is
this RC?

I would tend to say that if packages don't need $HOME they should set
something like --no-create-home.

I think I disagree here.

If we have a switch on adduser "--system" saying that the user to be
created is a system-user, I tend to think that adduser should then
select an appropriate place to create $HOME. (I wouldn't mind if we
say that for the upcoming release, this still is within /home, and we
fix that for the next stable release.)

Only if we find out that there is no appropriate place to create such
home directories by default, then I think we should ban the behaviour
- which would be mass bug filing, and then, also by force breaking
unfixed code. (Definitly something for the next cycle.)

However, if possible, I think I would prefer to get system home
directories created somewhere useable by default.


Andi

Hi,

This one time, at band camp, Andreas Barth said:

Where would you suggest?  I can't think of a better place, in the
absence of direction, than /home.  If packages rely on the presence of a
home directory, it's up to them to ask for a sensible one.

Cheers,

Creating /home/foo will break in the case of an nfs mounted /home, and
other packages are going out of wheezy for using adduser's --system
default.

But being rc buggy just for using --system is not friendly either.

Greetings
Marc

This one time, at band camp, Marc Haber said:

Yes, I know that your argument is "putting stuff under /home is bad".
My question was, and I'll repeat it: "Where would you suggest?"

So far, no one has made a constructive suggestion.  I'd say that that
might be because there isn't a good default outside of /home.  If we
take that as correct, then we have two choices: continue the current
behavior, or fail and abort with an error.  I'd suggest the latter
behavior is even less friendly.

Cheers,

* Stephen Gran (sgran@debian.org) [121212 08:19]:

I suggest to tolerate the current behaviour for the upcoming release.
Afterwards, I suggest to either require either --no-home or --home for
system users. Or switch defaults to another location, e.g.
/var/lib/syshome (or whatever else).

Currently, packages become RC-buggy for just adding system users
without --no-home and no --home (even if not relying on the
directory). I think that - if we read policy as that - then it's
better to fail the postinst then to have hidden RC bugs. Explicit RC
bugs are always better then well hidden ones. (Of course, all of that
for after this cycle.)


Andi

This one time, at band camp, Andreas Barth said:

Ew.  That seems to me to be inventing something ad-hoc and
Debian-specific, which feels wrong.

So we're not going to do an MBF, but we're going to make code changes
so that packages blow up at install time and users do the MBF for us,
one by one?  How bizarre.  That can't be what you're actually saying.

Cheers,

A first step could be to have adduser --system spew a warning in this
case. Maintainers should notice that when testing packages before
upload. Additionally, there could be a lintian check for that.

This course of action has numerous precedences.

Greetings
Marc

Hi,

This one time, at band camp, Marc Haber said:

Yes, that would be fine, so long as we remove the warning again before
release.  I see no reason to bother users for the next several years
with a message aimed at developers.

Is one of you interested in filing a bug on lintian for the new warning?

Cheers,

adduser is already Debian specific. It is a wrapper around useradd
which does things "right" from a Debian policy point of view, making
things easier for a package maintainer by making it harder to make
mistakes in postinst.

piuparts is already doing those MBFs. Maybe we don't make packages
blow up at install times first but we can print a warning.

Greetings
Marc

I like that idea. Stephen, what do you think?

Greetings
Marc

It is not my argument. It's piuparts' argument. They are filing
automatically generated release critical bugreports against packages
for doing so.

I do not have a sensible idea.

Greeings
Marc

piuparts surely thinks so.

Greetings
Marc

Done. #730456

Greetings
Marc

Control: retitle -1 adduser --system should default to --home /nonexistent
Control: severity -1 important

This Lintian check has been implemented back in 2013, so packages not
setting --home on adduser --system calls get flagged with a Lintian
"Error".

I think that adduser --system should change to default to /nonexistent
if no --home is given. This should be mentioned in NEWS.Debian
(refering to the lintian check maintainer-script-lacks-home-in-adduser)
and the manpage for --system should also state the the home directory
will be set to /nonexistent if not explicitly set.

Greetings
Marc

Control: retitle -1 adduser --system should default to --home /nonexistent
Control: severity -1 important

This Lintian check has been implemented back in 2013, so packages not
setting --home on adduser --system calls get flagged with a Lintian
"Error".

I think that adduser --system should change to default to /nonexistent
if no --home is given. This should be mentioned in NEWS.Debian
(refering to the lintian check maintainer-script-lacks-home-in-adduser)
and the manpage for --system should also state the the home directory
will be set to /nonexistent if not explicitly set.

Greetings
Marc

This patch [0] implements the default system user home dir as
/nonexistent.  Feedback welcome!

Cheers,
Matt

[0] https://salsa.debian.org/debian/adduser/-/merge_requests/20

Hello,

Bug #679746 in adduser reported by you has been fixed in the
Git repository and is awaiting an upload. You can see the commit
message below and you can check the diff of the fix at:

https://salsa.debian.org/debian/adduser/-/commit/cb338303d11925bd9b0212069f4d1c3e68e7d3c2
------------------------------------------------------------------------
System account home dir defaults to /nonexistent

Closes: #679746
------------------------------------------------------------------------

(this message was generated automatically)
-- 
Greetings

https://bugs.debian.org/679746

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
adduser, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 679746@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Marc Haber <mh+debian-packages@zugschlus.de> (supplier of updated adduser package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)
Format: 1.8
Date: Wed, 13 Jul 2022 20:30:00 +0200
Source: adduser
Architecture: source
Version: 3.122
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: low
Maintainer: Debian Adduser Developers <adduser@packages.debian.org>
Changed-By: Marc Haber <mh+debian-packages@zugschlus.de>
Closes: 202943 239825 398793 432562 520037 521883 588872 643559 664869 675804 679746 685532 701110 723572 774046 849265 874560 891748 896916 908997 920739 923059 925511 926262 969217 977678 979385 983405 992163 1001863 1006897 1006941 1006975 1007785 1008081 1008091 1014395 1014448
Changes:
 adduser (3.122) unstable; urgency=low
 .
   [ Marc Haber ]
   * improve package description.
   * Standards-Version: 4.6.1 (no changes necessary)
   * clean out EXTRA_GROUPS to only contain users.
     Thanks to Daniel Keast. (Closes: #849265)
   * add SECURITY section to manual pages.
   * add test for backups of home directory.
   * improve and update lintian overrides.
   * Formatting changes to manual pages.
     Thanks to Markus Hiereth. (Closes: #874560)
   * fix some typos in manual pages.
   * set VERBOSE and DEBUG envvars in deluser as well. (Closes: #1006897)
   * add documentation about adduser being a policy layer. (Closes: #1007785)
   * try to clarify system account terminology (policy vs system).
     (Closes: #1006975)
   * Document that only adduser --system is idempotent. (Closes: #723572)
   * error out for two-argument addgroup.
     Thanks to Mike Dornberger. (Closes: #664869)
   * make --add_extra_groups into --add-extra-groups. (Closes: #1014395)
   * --force-badname is now --allow-badname. (Closes: #1014448)
   * update turkish debconf translation.
     Thanks to Atila KOÇ. (Closes: #908997)
   * Update Russian debconf translation.
     Thanks to Lev Lamberov. (Closes: #920739)
   * Update Danish debconf translation (Closes: #923059)
   * Update Italian debconf translation.
     Thanks to Luca Monducci. (Closes: #969217)
   * Update German man page translation.
     Thanks to Helge Kreutzmann. (Closes: #977678)
   * Update European Portuguese translation of man page.
     Thanks to Américo Monteiro. (Closes: #925511)
   * disable translated manpages, none left for the time being.
   * deprecate planned directory service support.
   * Add docs about adduser.local being the place to interact with DS,
   * Some improvements to autopkgtests.
 .
   [ Matt Barry ]
   * System account home dir defaults to /nonexistent. (Closes: #679746)
   * do not accept all-numeric user names. (Closes: #891748)
   * prompts need y/n/empty(default).
   * Implement SYS_DIR_MODE. (Closes: #1008081, #202943, #398793)
   * Implement SYS_NAME_REGEX. (Closes: #521883, #432562)
   * Deprecate SETGID_HOME.
     Add NEWS/TODO items. (Closes: #643559, #979385, #1008091, #643559)
   * Fix ignored files for --remove-all-files.
     (Closes: #1001863, #588872, #926262, #992163)
   * Redefines the default NO_DEL_PATHS to avoid unnecessary
     scanning.
   * Change deluser_files test to use gzip.
   * Fix deletion of sockets/pipes. (Closes: #685532)
   * Simplify checkname sub.  (Closes: #1006941)
   * Adds support for lock files. (Closes: #983405)
   * Username validity testing framework.
   * Add --allow-all-names to bypass --force-badname.
     (Closes: #520037, #774046)
   * use warnf instead of printf in some places. (Closes: #675804)
   * Support tar --auto-compress for backups. (Closes: #896916)
   * Many improvements to autopkgtests. (Closes: 239825)
 .
   [ Jason Franklin ]
   * Allow for cloned-UID users in group member lists.
     Thanks to Daniel Heimann. (Closes: #701110)
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