Bug#1099470: colord: upgrade to colord 1.4.7-3 fails: The user `colord' already exists, but is not a system user.

[Michael Musenbrock]

Package: colord
Version: 1.4.7-3
Followup-For: Bug #1099470

Hi,

I stumbled over the same issue, and tried to have a look into what is the problem.
But apperently I failed to see it, yes a colord user already exists, but is a system user and uses the same home-dir.
According to `man adduser` this should not raise an error with adduser.

$ id colord
uid=115(colord) gid=123(colord) groups=123(colord)

$ grep colord /etc/passwd /etc/group /etc/shadow
/etc/passwd:colord:x:115:123:colord colour management daemon,,,:/var/lib/colord:/usr/sbin/nologin
/etc/group:colord:x:123:
/etc/shadow:colord:*:18596:0:99999:7:::

# grep -e SYS_UID_MIN -e SYS_UID_MAX /etc/login.defs
#SYS_UID_MIN              101
#SYS_UID_MAX              999

$ adduser --system --group --home /var/lib/colord --quiet --gecos "colord colour management daemon" colord
warn: The home dir /var/lib/colord you specified already exists.

fatal: The user `colord' already exists, but is not a system user. Exiting.
$ echo $?
13

This maybe looks more like an issue in adduser?

After some further debugging I saw the following behavior:

$ grep colord /etc/shadow
colord:*:18596:0:99999:7:::

$ sed -i 's/^colord:\*:/colord:\!:/g' /etc/shadow

$ grep colord /etc/shadow
colord:!:18596:0:99999:7:::

# adduser  --system  --home /var/lib/colord --comment "colord colour management daemon" colord
warn: The home dir /var/lib/colord you specified already exists.

fatal: The system user `colord' already exists. Exiting.

$ echo $?
0

So changing the shadow password field from '*' (no pwd) to '!' (locked) allows adduser to pass.

hth, br m


-- System Information:
Debian Release: trixie/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (504, 'unstable'), (503, 'testing'), (502, 'experimental'), (500, 'unstable-debug'), (1, 'experimental-debug')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 6.12.17-amd64 (SMP w/16 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_WARN, TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US:en
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages colord depends on:
ii  acl                                          2.3.2-2+b1
ii  adduser                                      3.143
ii  colord-data                                  1.4.7-3
ii  dconf-gsettings-backend [gsettings-backend]  0.40.0-5
ii  libc6                                        2.41-3
ii  libcolord2                                   1.4.7-3
ii  libcolorhug2                                 1.4.7-3
ii  libdbus-1-3                                  1.16.2-1
ii  libglib2.0-0t64                              2.83.5-1
ii  libgudev-1.0-0                               238-6
ii  libgusb2                                     0.4.9-1+b1
ii  liblcms2-2                                   2.16-2
ii  libpolkit-gobject-1-0                        126-2
ii  libsane1                                     1.3.1-1
ii  libsqlite3-0                                 3.46.1-1
ii  libsystemd0                                  257.3-1
ii  polkitd                                      126-2

colord recommends no packages.

Versions of packages colord suggests:
pn  colord-sensor-argyll  <none>

-- no debconf information