[Piuparts-devel] mass bug filing of 'deluser/delgroup: command not found' errors detected by piuparts

[Ian Jackson]

Andreas Beckmann writes ("mass bug filing of 'deluser/delgroup: command not found' errors detected by piuparts"):
> Most of these errors happen during the 'postrm purge' phase because
> non-essential programs are called by the maintainer script without
> checking their existance.

We had a conversation (here I think) last year about whether programs
should be trying to automatically remove users in their postrm.  IIRC
the conclusion of that discussion the answer was that they should not,
at least in the default case.

We should double check this, before you submit your MBF, so that
information about what to do can be included in your bug report.

>     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 should fix this problem.

In particular, I think this is the wrong advice because IMO the
correct fix is not to call any of these tools from postrm purge.

Thanks,
Ian.