Bug#996540: Post install fails when run as non-root user and does not respect PKG_ROOT
On Sat, 15 Jan 2022 07:54:17 +0100
Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues <josch@debian.org> wrote:
> Quoting Hilmar Preuße (2022-01-14 23:57:32)
> > > The post install is failing when dpkg is configured with a root and run as
> > > an unprivileged user. This is an issue partly with packaging and partly
> > > with the upstream package (I think). The upstream issue can be remedied
> > > with a patch in the packaging.
> > >
> > Did you test of texinfo 6.8 eventually solves the issue?
> >
> > Further I don't understand the use case: under which situations will a
> > configuration script will be run as non-privileged user?
>
> None. Glenn also filed #996435, #996438 and #996542 and my answer to the latter
> also holds for this bug:
>
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=996542#25
Josch, no need to answer disingenuously for me. There is in fact a use
case and it is in the metioned bug. Thank you for providing that
context.
Hi Helmar, I haven't tried with texinfo 6.8. Looking at the
update-fmtutil script in tex-common, which is doing most of the work in
the texinfo postinst script, it looks like the issue still exists.
There are many hardcoded absolute paths in that script.
I believe my original suggestion still holds if update-info-dir is
replaced by update-fmtutil.
I'll restate my use case briefly here. The use case is installing
packages as an unprivileged user to a user writable location (I don't
have privileges on this machine and can't chroot). This can be done by
invoking the dpkg binary with the "--force-script-chrootless" option
and works, but the post install fails.
Glenn
Reply to: