Bug#611302: ssmtp: installation fails if hostname returned value is not known
On Thu, 3 Mar 2011 14:11:30 -0600 "Brian Gilomen" <gilomen@ameritech.net> wrote:
> From: Ricardo Mones <mones@debian.org>
> Unpacking ssmtp (from .../ssmtp_2.64-4_armel.deb) ...
> E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
> I found it's because value returned by hostname is not known. Adding it to
> /etc/hosts fixed the problem and installation finished correctly.
> To my understanding this should not break installation, even if the value
> is not suitable to run ssmtp and will make it fail on run.
> I am experiencing the same error. When you state "Adding it to /etc/hosts fixed the problem" what is the "it"? In other words, what hostname would be appropriate to add to the /etc/hosts file? What would be the appropriate format/syntax?
This issue is still present - it affects systems without a FQDN, for
example containers.
The issue is that postinst calls "hostname --fqdn" and fails if that
command does not work. Per the man-page of hostname, adding an entry
for 127.0.1.1 will make this work, ie if /etc/hosts contains
127.0.1.1 systemname.example.com systemname
then hostname --fqdn returns systemname.example.com and that will
allow installation to proceed.
I think maybe postinst should fall back to calling "hostname" or even
"localhost" if there is no fqdn? at the very least, it should tell the
user to set a fqdn instead of just failing
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