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Bug#1042805: marked as done (base-files: removal of VERSION_ID from /etc/os-release broke zoom screen sharing, please restore)

Your message dated Tue, 15 Aug 2023 12:26:04 +0200
with message-id <[🔎] e2e8c9cd-c215-0ad4-61af-475c29293764@debian.org>
and subject line Re: Bug#1042805: base-files: removal of VERSION_ID from /etc/os-release broke zoom screen sharing, please restore
has caused the Debian Bug report #1042805,
regarding base-files: removal of VERSION_ID from /etc/os-release broke zoom screen sharing, please restore
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

(NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what this
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-- 
1042805: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1042805
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message --- 
Package: base-files
Version: 13
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

*** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***

Version 13 of base-files removed VERSION_ID from /etc/os-release.  As reported
in https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1008735 the absence of
this field breaks screen sharing with Zoom.  It uses that field to test if
minimum system requirements have been met.

Related information:

https://www.guyrutenberg.com/2020/06/22/fixing-zoom-screen-sharing-on-debian-
unstable/
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1008735

I will repeat what I reported previously, but that was when Debian testing was
a lead-up to version 12.

This is arguably a bug in zoom (checking the contents of /etc/os-release !=
checking for screen share success), but getting them to fix
it appears to be impossible (lord knows I've tried), and, on the other hand, it
also seems there must be something sensible that can be put
into /etc/os-release to make it work.  Is it really true that no version
information whatsoever is the only acceptable solution on
Debian's end?  Is there a middle ground on this?

At least on testing, with the current version of base-files, only the
VERSION_ID variable needs to be added to /etc/os-release to fix zoom
(not the other stuff shown on that web page).  I don't know about unstable, but
it's probably the same story.

Some example VERSION_ID values I've confirmed fix zoom on testing: "12", " 12",
"12 ", "11.999", "9999", "12.pre", "12.testing", "12.2022-11-30".  Some that
I've confirmed do not fix it:  "11+", "12-", "testing", "12 testing", "inf",
"-1".  It's hard to say what, exactly, it's looking for, but it seems like
"integer[.arbitrary text]" is acceptable to it, although it has some additional
flexibility.  The leading integer part must >= 9 to allow screen sharing.


*** End of the template - remove these template lines ***


-- System Information:
Debian Release: trixie/sid
  APT prefers testing-security
  APT policy: (500, 'testing-security'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 6.3.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_FIRMWARE_WORKAROUND
Locale: LANG=en_CA.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_CA.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages base-files depends on:
ii  gawk [awk]  1:5.2.1-2
ii  mawk [awk]  1.3.4.20230525-1

base-files recommends no packages.

base-files suggests no packages.

-- debconf-show failed

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
El 1/8/23 a las 6:14, Kipp Cannon escribió:

Package: base-files
Version: 13
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

*** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***

Version 13 of base-files removed VERSION_ID from /etc/os-release.  As reported
in https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1008735 the absence of
this field breaks screen sharing with Zoom.  It uses that field to test if
minimum system requirements have been met.


This is not a bug in base-files. The relevant standard is here:

https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/os-release.html

VERSION_ID=

    A lower-case string [...] => This field is optional. <=

Debian follows here a long tradition where development releases (testing, unstable)
do not have any version at all as far as they are not stable yet, they only have
a codename.

This tradition probably originated from the faulty Debian "1.0" release, where
a CD vendor took the development version of Debian and released it on CDs before
it was ready for release.

The Debian base-files package implements this idea by only adding the VERSION_ID
field in os-release a few months before stable releases (so that we can properly test
how the system will behave when it has a VERSION_ID).

So, yes, this is a bug in the zoom application. When VERSION_ID is optional, it's
a mistake to take it for granted and assume blindly that it will always exist.

If they believe that the desired feature will work on trixie and later, they
could still check for VERSION_CODENAME, which is now always present.

I have reassigned this report to both base-files and release.debian.org just in case the
Release Managers have anything to say about this, but as far as I know this has been
the official Debian policy for decades and I believe it's very unlikely that we
want to change it just to make a piece of proprietary software to work.

Thanks.

--- End Message ---
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