Bug#1035291: desktop-autoloader: fails to purge - command (deluser|adduser) in postrm not found

[Andreas Beckmann]

Package: desktop-autoloader
Version: 0.0.4-1
Severity: serious
Tags: sid bookworm
User: debian-qa at lists.debian.org
Usertags: piuparts

Hi,

during a test with piuparts I noticed your package failed to purge due
to a command not found. According to policy 7.2 you cannot rely on the
depends being available during purge, only the essential packages are
available for sure.

The fix should be easy: your package is using adduser or deluser from
the adduser package, which is only priority important. Using useradd or
userdel from the passwd package (priority required) should fix this
problem.

There is ongoing discussion how to handle system users on package
removal, see https://bugs.debian.org/621833
Consensus seems to be not to remove system users (to avoid reusing UIDs
which could grant access to the wrong files) but to "lock" them (where
"locking"/"unlocking" is not yet precisely defined). Until that has
been decided it should be sufficient to have the postrm script ignore
any errors from deluser:
  deluser ... || true

>From the attached log (scroll to the bottom...):

0m21.8s DEBUG: Starting command: ['chroot', '/srv/piuparts.debian.org/tmp/tmpb252mt2q', 'dpkg', '--purge', 'desktop-autoloader']
0m21.8s DUMP:
  (Reading database ... 8072 files and directories currently installed.)
  Purging configuration files for desktop-autoloader (0.0.4-1) ...
  /var/lib/dpkg/info/desktop-autoloader.postrm: 25: deluser: not found
  dpkg: error processing package desktop-autoloader (--purge):
   installed desktop-autoloader package post-removal script subprocess returned error exit status 127
  Errors were encountered while processing:
   desktop-autoloader
0m21.8s ERROR: Command failed (status=1): ['chroot', '/srv/piuparts.debian.org/tmp/tmpb252mt2q', 'dpkg', '--purge', 'desktop-autoloader']


cheers,

Andreas
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