Bug#203650: Poor recommendation in dpkg-statoverride section

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

On Sun, Aug 03, 2003 at 10:23:10PM +0200, Jakob Bohm wrote:
> On Sat, Aug 02, 2003 at 09:59:13AM +1000, Herbert Xu wrote:
> > A single pre-dependency is not enough.  You will need to convert all
> > of adduser's dependencies into pre-dependencies, and probably most of
> > the things it depends on as well.
> > 
> > You also need to ensure that adduser and anything that it depends on to
> > function are always available at all times just like libc6.
> 
> Note that only a few packages will need these dependencies,
> unlike libc6.  Specifically, these packages will be needed by a
> subset of the packages that currently Depends: adduser .
> 
> Of those packages, only two are non-optional: ssh and pidentd.
> To fix that, the sshd and ??? accounts would need to be added to
> base-passwd.

The ssh package does not contain any files owned by the sshd user, even
after configuration, although it does arrange for /usr/bin/ssh-agent to
be setgid ssh.

> Policy-wise, there would be a rule that packages with priority
> standard or above cannot use the option to add needed users during
> installation, but must coordinate their needs with base-passwd.

I disagree (as base-passwd maintainer, although only for some months)
with this principle; if it's necessary then I think we've made a design
error. The intention for base-passwd is to reduce the number of entries
in the globally allocated space, and thus the number of mandatory
entries in /etc/passwd and /etc/group, not to increase them. In the long
term I'm hoping that we can find a way to have even some of the current
mandatory entries merely allocated in a registry somewhere in
/usr/share/base-passwd which adduser can use to create those entries on
demand, although clearly that would need delicate transitional handling.

Furthermore, the priority standard line appears to be entirely
arbitrary. I assume it's designed to reduce the number of entries that
must be allocated in base-passwd. However, there is no reason why
problems encountered by Priority: standard packages and above (provided
they aren't Essential or in adduser's dependency chain) should not also
be encountered by Priority: optional and Priority: extra packages.
Therefore, in solving these problems for the latter class of packages we
can also solve it for the former.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]