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

[Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es>]

On Thu, Mar 14, 2019 at 10:37:46AM +0000, Simon McVittie wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Mar 2019 at 10:21:30 +0100, Santiago Vila wrote:
> > The reason I'm often asked to add hacks to base-files.postinst is only
> > that base-files is usually configured in the second place
> 
> I think it's also fair to say that base-files is exactly a collection of
> the miscellaneous files and bootstrapping actions that no other package
> seems particularly responsible for, so if a new miscellaneous file or a
> new bootstrapping action appears, base-files seems a reasonably natural
> home for it (or at least, more natural than a package that contains
> non-bootstrapping code, for example bash or debianutils).

Maybe, but this is neither a new miscellaneous file nor a new
bootstrapping action. This is yet another bootstrapping tool
forgetting the lessons learned from the other bootstrapping tools.

Helmut Grohne wrote:
> If we agree that this would be the best fix for buster, I volunteer to
> write a patch for base-files to implement that.

No, I do not agree, so please don't.

> How is a bootstrap tool supposed to know
> that it must configure base-passwd before base-files?

In a theoretical level, because it's their job to know such things.

In a practical level, because you already see what happens when
you configure any package which uses users defined in /etc/passwd
without a minimal /etc/passwd in place. Again in a practical level,
once we know it, we can't pretend that we don't know it.

You want to create a common framework to reuse such knowledge and
share it between different bootstrapping tools? Fine, maybe then new
bootstrapping tools finally realize that there must be a valid
/etc/passwd before configuring anything else.
 
But lack of such a common framework is not an excuse to ditch the
definition of essential and start doing things "just in case"
some new bootstrapping tool forgets again that there must
be a valid /etc/passwd before configuring anything else.

Please reassign to whatever bootstrapping tool is not doing its job
properly. Sorry, but this is starting to annoy me.

Thanks.