Bug#924401: base-files fails postinst when base-passwd is unpacked

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 07:30:21PM +0100, Helmut Grohne wrote:

> > Do any of them still don't know that base-passwd should be configured
> > first because otherwise any other package using root (be it base-files
> > or any other) will fail? I think this was already settled in the last
> > discussion we had about this several years ago.
> 
> multistrap doesn't take care of this and you can provoke a
> base-files.postinst failure this way.

In such case I would say that as a bootstrapping tool it's not doing
its job properly.

The first rule of a bootstrapping tool is that it has to work.
(And there are actually no other rules. As far as it does its job,
you are allowed to do all sorts of dirty hacks).

Bootstrapping tools exist so that we don't have to worry about
dependencies on essential packages. It has always been my opinion that
if we start to do hacks here and there so that bootstrapping tools
work properly, we are already doing it wrong.

> > Can you provide at least a bug number for the bootstrapping tool that
> > apparently still tries to configure all packages at once, or
> > base-passwd and base-files in the same row?
> 
> #924401, but I'm not yet sure which part we need to fix.

Hmm, but that's the present bug.

I meant a bug in a bootstrapping tool.

> [,,,]
> Just because debootstrap encodes a ton of hacks to make things barely
> work (and break every so often) doesn't mean we have to maintain them
> until eternity.

I would say: Just because people writing new bootstrapping tools seem
to forget the lessons learned from previous bootstrapping tools, we
have to learn again what bootstrapping really means: It's not adding
hacks to the normal packages, it's concentrating all the hacks in the
bootstrapping tools, so that we can keep ordinary packages clean of
hacks.

(Or at least that's what I think it was the idea behind the essential
definition).

Thanks.