Bug#1099470: colord: upgrade to colord 1.4.7-3 fails: The user `colord' already exists, but is not a system user.
Michael Musenbrock
michael.musenbrock at gmx.at
Mon Mar 3 22:18:35 GMT 2025
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
More information about the Pkg-freedesktop-maintainers
mailing list