[Pkg-Cyrus-imapd-Debian-devel] Bug#323236: nut: reinstalling nut breaks if user cyrus is not there

[Sven Mueller]

Severity 323236 normal
Tags 323236 +wontfix
thanks

Hi.

This bug was re-assigned to cyrus21-imapd, which is partly correct as
the problem is indeed related to the cyrus21-imapd packages. However,
the error your system reported isn't the fault of the cyrus21 packages
as it seems.

What happened?

1) cyrus21 packages got installed and created the cyrus user as well
   as some dpkg-statoverride entries related to that user.
2) cyrus21 packages got removed (but not purged).
3) you manually deleted the cyrus user
4) on the next bigger operation, dpkg complains about the stat override
   entries which refer to a user which doesn't exist anymore.

Now, sorry to say that, but it was your mistake. You shouldn't manually
delete auto-created users without making sure that they aren't used
anymore, including the stat overrides.
How to fix that:
You have two options:
1) you manually delete (or chown) all files owned by the cyrus user and
   remove the cyrus related entries from dpkg-statoverrides. You should
   probably also check wether that user is still referenced somewhere
   else.
2) you purge cyrus21-common which should delete all remaining files
   owned by the cyrus user (if you answer the debconf question
   accordingly), remove the stat overrides and delete the cyrus user.

cu,
sven