[pkg-gnupg-maint] Bug#884760: dirmngr: With missing .gnupg directory, dirmngr fails to start as daemon

[kwadronaut - debian]

Package: dirmngr
Version: 2.1.18-8~deb9u1
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

I wanted to test some signatures, thus had to fetch keys. In Debian
Stretch, dirmngr is kind of expected to be around to use gpg
--recv-keys. Starting dirmngr is easy, either foreground or as daemon.

"dirmngr" will start in foreground, create missing directories.
"dirmngr --daemon" should start in the background, but it doesn't create
missing directories (~/.gnupg):

dirmngr[988]: error opening '/root/.gnupg/dirmngr_ldapservers.conf': No
such file or directory
dirmngr[988]: error binding socket to '/root/.gnupg/S.dirmngr': No such
file or directory
Exited with code 1

~/repo# dirmngr
dirmngr[1574]: error opening '/root/.gnupg/dirmngr_ldapservers.conf': No
such file or directory
dirmngr[1574.0]: permanently loaded certificates: 0
dirmngr[1574.0]:     runtime cached certificates: 0
dirmngr[1574.0]: failed to open cache dir file
'/root/.gnupg/crls.d/DIR.txt': No such file or directory
dirmngr[1574.0]: creating directory '/root/.gnupg'
dirmngr[1574.0]: creating directory '/root/.gnupg/crls.d'
dirmngr[1574.0]: new cache dir file '/root/.gnupg/crls.d/DIR.txt'
created
# Home: /root/.gnupg
# Config: [none]
OK Dirmngr 2.1.18 at your service


If I create a directory, or start in foreground, stop and start in
background things *do* work as expected. Would it be possible to let
the --daemon behave similar and thus create the missing ~/.gnupg/?

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.2
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.4.0-103-generic (SMP w/32 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored:
LC_ALL set to en_US.UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
(ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: unable to detect

Versions of packages dirmngr depends on:
ii  adduser        3.115
ii  libassuan0     2.4.3-2
ii  libc6          2.24-11+deb9u1
ii  libgcrypt20    1.7.6-2+deb9u2
ii  libgnutls30    3.5.8-5+deb9u3
ii  libgpg-error0  1.26-2
ii  libksba8       1.3.5-2
ii  libldap-2.4-2  2.4.44+dfsg-5+deb9u1
ii  libnpth0       1.3-1
ii  lsb-base       9.20161125

Versions of packages dirmngr recommends:
ii  gnupg  2.1.18-8~deb9u1

Versions of packages dirmngr suggests:
pn  dbus-user-session  <none>
pn  libpam-systemd     <none>
pn  pinentry-gnome3    <none>
pn  tor                <none>

-- no debconf information