Re: dpkg-statoverride: Do I need a cluebat?

[Adam Heath <doogie@debian.org>]

On Sun, 14 Mar 2004, Andreas Metzler wrote:

> Andreas Barth <aba@not.so.argh.org> wrote:
> > I'm just plaguing myself with dpkg-statoverride, and I have one
> > fundamental question: Do I have a silly problem and need a cluebat, or
> > is dpkg-statoverride broken by design?
>
> Yes, probably both, but see below.
>
> > What I want to do: I have a package that had different stati for one
> > directory via dpkg-statoverride. So, I need to force some setting
> > under special conditions. However, I don't want to override
> > sysadmins settings.
> [...]
>
> That is exactly the problem with dpkg-statoverride.
>
> Rules of thumb:
> * Do not modify overrides in maintainerscripts, ship the permissions
>   in the deb.
> * dpkg-statoverride is for the sysadmin.
> * Only "if ! dpkg-statoverride --list ..." is completely ok.
>
> Problems arise if you cannot ship the permissions in the deb,
> basically you have some options, depending on the requirenents
> * Add a dpkg-statoverride.
> * Don't ship empty directory in deb, use mkdir.
> * re-set permissions/owner in on ever installation in postinst.
>   if ! dpkg-statoverride --list /file/foo
>      #ask for suid with debconf
>      chmod u+s /file/foo
>   fi

Call adduser in preinst, ship perms in deb as normal.