[Debconf-devel] Bug#1129767: debconf: success exit status on dpkg-reconfigure failure

[Colin Watson]

Control: reassign -1 openafs-client

On Thu, Mar 05, 2026 at 05:51:57PM -0500, Ernesto Alfonso wrote:
> Package: debconf
> Version: 1.5.91
> Severity: important
> X-Debbugs-Cc: erjoalgo at gmail.com
> 
> Dear Maintainer,
> 
> Running dpkg-reconfigure can fail with a zero or success exit status. This prevents scripts 
> that expect a certain reconfiguration from knowing that it failed.
> 
>     █[hp11][dotfiles][0]$ sudo DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive dpkg-reconfigure openafs-client
>     Could not execute systemctl:  at /usr/bin/deb-systemd-invoke line 148.
>     █[hp11][dotfiles][0]$ echo $?
>     0

dpkg-reconfigure just passes through the exit code of the maintainer 
scripts it's executing.  If openafs-client is inappropriately exiting 
non-zero (I haven't done the analysis to work out if it's really 
inappropriate in this particular case), then that's a problem in that 
package, or in whatever it's calling.

-- 
Colin Watson (he/him)                              [cjwatson at debian.org]