On Tue, 12 Jul 2016, Goswin von Brederlow wrote: > And now it occurs in cdebootstrap (again, happened before and went > away, now it's back),
So, if it happens again, why didn't you report it against cdebootstrap to begin with? This is the package having the bug, not base-files. Please, feel free to reopen this report and reassign to whatever package is failing to properly bootstrap the system. > and then the next bootstrap tool and again and again. Not necessarily. It has been clearly established that base-files uses chown with Debian system users. It should be clear by now that base-passwd should be configured first by any bootstrapping tool. > The sane solution is to fix the problem at the source, not in the > various bootstrap tools. Especially when you don't communicate the > need for a fix to other tools and only fix one. Well, if you discover a bug in cdebootstrap and file a bug against base-files, I think it's you who don't communicate the need for a fix. I can't be responsible for every bootstrapping tool out there. For the record, what base-files does is not new at all. If you read carefully the bug report I quoted before, you will see that last time this broke it was triggered by a subtle change in dpkg ordering. Before that, base-passwd and base-files were installed in the same dpkg run, and as you rightly point out, this was a matter of luck that it worked. But this was never base-files fault. > And the bug hits all the right arguments: > > - base-passwd does not provide /etc/passwd when unpacked, it therefor > can't be core functionality => base-files should Depends: base-passwd. Sorry, I don't buy that line of reasoning. If base-passwd can't be essential then it should lose its essential flag, but then every package using chown in their postinst should have a Depends: base-passwd, not just base-files. There may be zillions of packages using chown in their postinst, so this is not reasonable at all. > [...] > the quick fix of adding "Depends: base-passwd". I don't agree with your comparison "fix bootstrap -> difficult", "add an artificial dependency to base-files -> easy". Configuring base-passwd first then base-files is also very quick. If you read the bug I quoted before the patch is usually a one-liner, which is also easy enough. The only reason this was not a "quick fix" last time is that people insisted on killing the messenger (base-files) instead of fixing what was really broken (debootstrap). Thanks.
