[Adduser-devel] Bug#679746: Bug#679746: default --system home directory leads to piuparts RC bugs

[Andreas Barth]

* Stephen Gran (sgran at debian.org) [120702 13:25]:
> Policy says packages can't rely on the layout of /home/
> Some packages invoke adduser --system without the switch --home
> In this case, adduser creates a user with $HOME under /home/

Question now is how bad is "directory created unter /home" really. Is
this RC?


> There is so far no evidence that these packages rely on the presence of
> that directory

I would tend to say that if packages don't need $HOME they should set
something like --no-create-home.


> Now, I don't agree that this is a bug in adduser - I think this is a bug
> in packages invoking adduser.  I think the right way to do this is a
> mass bug filing on those packages.

I think I disagree here.

If we have a switch on adduser "--system" saying that the user to be
created is a system-user, I tend to think that adduser should then
select an appropriate place to create $HOME. (I wouldn't mind if we
say that for the upcoming release, this still is within /home, and we
fix that for the next stable release.)

Only if we find out that there is no appropriate place to create such
home directories by default, then I think we should ban the behaviour
- which would be mass bug filing, and then, also by force breaking
unfixed code. (Definitly something for the next cycle.)

However, if possible, I think I would prefer to get system home
directories created somewhere useable by default.


Andi