Dear Mentors, While packaging a package for a Virtual Observatory server, I'm encountering a postinst glitch in the CI that I don't quite understand.
This is about [email protected]:debian-astro-team/gavodachs.git, the gavo branch. The idea is that the package creates a user that has all the necessary permissions to configure the server, run debug copies, and the like. It is called dachsroot, and the postinst creates if if necessary: # create user "dachsroot" if (s)he is not already there if ! getent passwd dachsroot ; then adduser --disabled-password --gecos "" --ingroup gavo dachsroot fi This has never resulted in headache over all the years that we have been distributing the resulting package outside of Debian. But the CI on salsa gives: Adding user `dachsroot' ... Adding new user `dachsroot' (1011) with group `gavo' ... Creating home directory `/home/dachsroot' ... Stopped: Couldn't create home directory `/home/dachsroot': File exists. Removing directory `/home/dachsroot' ... Removing user `dachsroot' ... after which the installation duly fails. Now... I really cannot see where that home directory might come from (the full log is on https://salsa.debian.org/debian-astro-team/gavodachs/-/jobs/798533/raw), which made me doubt whether a package is allowed to create users with homes in the first place and what I'm seeing here really is some adduser extra on the CI. However, at least in 9.2 in the Policy I've not seen anything to that effect. Have I missed it there or anywhere else? And if it's legal to create users like this: Why would the adduser in the postinst fail? Thanks, Markus
