Hi Christoph!

On Mo, 03 Mai 2021, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:

> Package: privoxy
> Version: 3.0.32-2
> Severity: normal
> 
> I've just noted, that when purging the package, at least the user
> is left behind and not removed.
> 
> Any reason for that?

Thanks for your report.
Yes, there is a reason for disabling the user deletion on purge:

privoxy (3.0.6-3) unstable; urgency=low

  * According to http://wiki.debian.org/AccountHandlingInMaintainerScripts
    removing system users in postrm isn't a good idea. So the removal of
    user privoxy in postrm was disabled and deluser/adduser of existing
    user in postinst was also removed. This should avoid problems with
    purging privoxy if passwd package isn't installed (Closes: #417015).

 -- Roland Rosenfeld <rol...@debian.org>  Sat, 19 May 2007 21:22:42 +0200

It seems to be consensus that deleting users on purge is a bad idea,
see policy bug reports
https://bugs.debian.org/228692
https://bugs.debian.org/291177
https://bugs.debian.org/621833
but it is still not written to the policy, but only in the above wiki
page and bug reports.

So it seems to be best practice to keep the user on purge.

Is it okay to close this bug report accordingly or do yo prefer to
keep it open and tag it "wontfix"?

Greetings
Roland

Reply via email to