Bug#366107: Installing tex-common gets stuck after giving invalid group

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

Hi everybody,

>>Helge Hafting <helgehaf@aitel.hist.no> wrote:
[...]
>>>A nice fix for tex-common, would be to do minimal validation
>>>of the group name entered.  For example, see if
>>>"getent groupname" works.  Shellscript test:
>>>
>>>if getent group $GROUPNAME ; then echo ok ; else echo bad ; fi
>>>
>>>This works for me, of course you want to do better than "echo",
>>>i.e. bring up the group dialog box again on failure.
>>>    
>>>
>>
>>That sounds like a very good way to do it; many thanks.

I've been writing some code, but now I'm unsure about one thing: What
will happen if somebody installs Debian newly on a clean system,
e.g. with a CD, and chooses to install a TeX system at the very first
moment?  Does this happen before local users (and hence groups) are
created?  

If this situation might arise, we cannot check for valid groups in the
config script (which is run immediately after doing the choices and
downloading, and prior to any unpacking or installation).  

Does anybody know, or do we need to ask the installer people?

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)