[buildd-tools-devel] Bug#710167: Bug#710167: sbuild: support non-local sbuild user

[Roger Leigh]

On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 07:31:59PM +0200, Oxan van Leeuwen wrote:
> I run a setup where the sbuild user is in LDAP. This makes the usermod command
> in the postinst script fail, because usermod only operates on local users. 
> 
> Attached patch verifies the user exists in /etc/passwd before attempting to run
> usermod. I couldn't find another way to check whether running usermod on a user
> would work.

Why is the user in LDAP rather than local?  My understanding of this
is that when packages create system users using adduser, they are
created in the local system databases, and not in LDAP, therefore
we would expect that any modification of these users/groups would
work in maintainer scripts after their creation.

Regarding the patch, I don't think it's necessarily safe since other
types of local database are also supported by the tools.  Also, this
isn't a problem specific to sbuild, it's a problem relating to any
package creating/modifying users.  I'm not saying that it's not a
problem, just that if it's something that needs addressing, it needs
fixing for the general case rather than just on a package-by-package
basis.


Regards,
Roger

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