Your message dated Mon, 25 May 2026 18:15:17 -0400 with message-id <[email protected]> and subject line Findings regarding pidof usage in podman has caused the Debian Bug report #1136557, regarding podman uses pidof but does not depend on procps to be marked as done.
This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with. If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith. (NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what this message is talking about, this may indicate a serious mail system misconfiguration somewhere. Please contact [email protected] immediately.) -- 1136557: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1136557 Debian Bug Tracking System Contact [email protected] with problems
--- Begin Message ---Source: podman Version: 5.8.2+ds1-1 Usertags: pidof-without-procps Dear maintainer(s) of podman, it appears that podman uses `pidof` in its testsuite, or that at least one of its binary packages uses `pidof` at runtime. Historically, `pidof` was provided by the Essential package `sysvinit-tools`, making an explicit dependency unnecessary. However `pidof` will soon be moved to `procps` and will no longer be part of the Essential set. Please add an explicit dependency on `procps`: * via the `Depends:` field of all binary packages of podman that use `pidof` at runtime; * via the `Build-Depends:` field of podman, if `pidof` is used in tests run at build-time; * via the `Depends:` field of `debian/control/tests`, if `pidof` is used in autopkgtests. To prevent any disruption for users of podman, please add this dependency now, before `pidof` is moved from `sysvinit-utils` to `procps`. Alternatively, you could remove all uses of `pidof`. It is believed that podman uses `pidof` due to the following code snippets: ``` path: podman_5.7.0+ds2-3/test/apiv2/python/rest_api/test_v2_0_0_container.py out = r.json() self.assertIsNotNone(out["State"].get("Health")) self.assertListEqual(["CMD", "pidof", "top"], out["Config"]["Healthcheck"]["Test"]) self.assertEqual(5000000000, out["Config"]["Healthcheck"]["Interval"]) self.assertEqual(2000000000, out["Config"]["Healthcheck"]["Timeout"]) path: podman_5.7.0+ds2-3/test/apiv2/python/rest_api/test_v2_0_0_container.py out = r.json() hc = out["Config"]["Healthcheck"]["Test"] self.assertListEqual(["CMD", "pidof", "top"], hc) r = requests.post(self.podman_url + f"/v1.40/containers/{container_id}/start") path: podman_5.7.0+ds2-3/test/apiv2/python/rest_api/test_v2_0_0_container.py "Image": "alpine:latest", "Healthcheck": { "Test": ["CMD", "pidof", "top"], "Interval": 5000000000, "Timeout": 2000000000, ``` Feel free to close this issue if this is a false positive (for example if this code is in an unreachable code path). Regards, -- Gioele Barabucci
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--- Begin Message ---Version: 5.8.2+ds1-1 Hello, Thank you for the report regarding the upcoming pidof transition. I have investigated the usage of "pidof" in the podman source tree and found the following: 1. The only occurrences of "pidof" are in the Python-based API test suite: test/apiv2/python/rest_api/test_v2_0_0_container.py 2. In these tests, a container is **dynamically created** via a POST request to the Podman API using the alpine:latest image. The "pidof" command is defined as part of a Healthcheck configuration sent in the JSON payload of that request. 3. Consequently, "pidof" is intended to run *inside* the Alpine container namespace. In that context, it is provided by the container's own BusyBox/tools, not the host's procps package. 4. These Python tests are currently not executed during the Debian build process (dh_auto_test only runs Go tests) nor are they part of any autopkgtest defined in debian/tests/control. 5. I found no evidence of "pidof" being used by the podman binary itself or any of the systemd units/scripts shipped in the package. As such, this is a false positive for the host environment, and no additional dependency on procps is required. I am therefore closing this bug. Regards, -rt
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