On Thu, Apr 28, 2022 at 02:32:49PM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote: > On Thu, 28 Apr 2022 at 14:02:46 +0100, Julian Gilbey wrote: > > On Thu, Apr 28, 2022 at 10:16:30AM +0100, Simon McVittie wrote: > > > According to the autopkgtest spec[1], > > > > > > Tests can expect that the $HOME environment variable to be set to > > > a directory that exists and is writeable by the user running the test. > > > > That's interesting; I don't find any code that sets HOME in > > autopkgtest. > > The purpose of autopkgtest is to run the tests in a realistic environment > that resembles a real Debian desktop or server, but it doesn't know much > about how the testbed system is set up, so it relies on the virtualization > backend or the testbed itself to set HOME appropriately. Ideally, it > should be logging into a fully-working Debian system (perhaps under qemu > or lxc, or even on real hardware via ssh) and running tests there. > > As I said on #986665, this seems like either a bug in > autopkgtest-virt-schroot, or misconfiguration in how you and Laurent > are configuring it (the schroot profile that you're telling it to use). > [...]
I see; this makes more sense now. So can I suggest that sbuild-setup(7) explains this a bit more and discusses setting up a meaningful HOME directory? And perhaps has the things necessary for a meaningful XDG_RUNTIME_DIR set up by default as well? > > (Incidentally, given that > > typically XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is in the ephemeral /run filesystem, writing > > to it would not violate policy 4.9.) > > Policy ยง4.9 says that "Required targets must not attempt to write outside > of the unpacked source package tree", then makes a few exceptions for > locations like /tmp. /run is not one of those locations, so writing to > /run is not allowed. Ah, I didn't read it carefully enough; you are right. > > I wonder whether autopkgtest > > could consider setting up a temporary directory for this purpose like > > dh_auto_test does, rather than using the heavy machinery of > > libpam-systemd? > > No, I don't think it should. The purpose of autopkgtest is to run the > [...] Understood. Julian