Bug#885967: #885967: FTBFS: FAILED test of gethostid ENOENT

[Andreas Beckmann <anbe@debian.org>]

On Thu, 4 Jan 2018 21:40:48 +0100 Adam Borowski <kilobyte@angband.pl> wrote:
> } PATH=`pwd`/bin:$PATH /bin/sh test/07/t0705a.sh
> } 2,3c2,3
> } < (ENOENT) because there is no "hostid" regular file in the pathname "/etc"
> } < directory; did you mean the "hosts" regular file instead?
> } ---
> } > (ENOENT) because there is no "hostid" regular file in the pathname
> } > "/etc" directory
> } FAILED test of gethostid ENOENT
> 
> Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > /etc/hosts is created in the postinst of the netbase package,
> > so "missing build dependency on netbase" would be another way
> > to describe the problem.
> 
> Not sure if this is the best way to fix the failure, although it _would_
> make the error message find /etc/hosts there so it can be suggested.
> 
> This test is fragile, though -- if you have a file named /etc/hosting or
> such, it'll be picked instead of "hosts".
> 
> The root cause, though, is that libexplain knows about gethostid, thus it
> can rule out an user making a typo -- the function looks for /etc/hostid and
> hothing else.

At a quick glance the look_for_similar() functionality in
libexplain/buffer/errno/path_resolution.c cannot be disabled, therefore
a proper solution for making the test output deterministic (independent
of the content of /etc) is not easily possible. The tests also don't
seem to support regular expressions ...

I'd suggest to add the B-D: netbase, and reconsider this decision once
base-files ships /etc/hostile in case that is a better suggestion than
/etc/hosts :-)

Can this bug be reproduced in stretch or jessie buildd chroots - or can
we tag it sid+buster?


Andreas