Hi,

On Thu, Nov 06, 2014 at 22:44:40 +0100, Adam Borowski wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 06, 2014 at 02:06:07PM +0000, Michael Tautschnig wrote:
[...]
> > 1. Determine whether base-passwd is in line with policy on providing its
> > functionality as an "essential" package.
> >   A) If it is, then debootstrap is buggy.
> 
> Even if it somehow is, there's a practical problem: it's impossible to
> deploy a fix to a significant part of users.
> 

Yes, I can see that. But determining the package at fault would nevertheless
help to see what the best fix is in the long run.

> >   B) If base-passwd violates policy, then base-passwd is buggy.
> 
> I say it is, but since the only consumer that matters is base-files, it
> might be safer to change the latter.
> 

Well, as Santiago has said in many ways, the necessary changes to base-files
could be painful as well. I'd rather see it the other way: if base-passwd were
changed, it might as well be possible to simplify debootstrap further as it
could be the case that the present dpkg -i call specific to base-files and
base-passwd would no longer be necessary, i.e., they could just be installed in
arbitrary sequence with the other essential packages.

> > My point of view is that base-passwd should be changed, and thanks to
> > suggestions from Tollef last night the attached patch should actually 
> > achieve
> > this. The idea simply is to sort out creating /etc/passwd and /etc/group in
> > preinst already, so that these files will be present once the package 
> > reaches
> > the state "unpacked."
> 
> I tested your patch when debootstrapping from squeeze, it did work.  Should
> I test some more scenarios (cdebootstrap?  2-phase cross-arch debootstrap?
> some other distro?) -- or do you think it should be safe?
> 

Cool, thanks!! If testing is trivial for you then I'm sure this would be
appreciated (in particular the "it did not work before, but not it works"
improvement). While I wouldn't really expect any new problems, I don't know
enough about, e.g., cdebootstrap so maybe something could go wrong over there?

Best,
Michael

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