Bug#925473: tomcat9: sysvinit script missing (Policy §9.11¶2 =?UTF-8?Q?=E2=80=9Cmust=E2=80=9D?=)

[Emmanuel Bourg]

Le 02/04/2019 à 23:01, Thorsten Glaser a écrit :

> Most people using Debian without systemd have APT pinning or other
> measures in place that prevent the systemd package, which ships the
> systemd-sysusers binary (and service?), from being installed, in
> order to not sneakily being converted to systemd (it did happen).

I did some tests in a VM with a minimal install where I switched to
sysvinit with:
  apt install sysvinit-core
  cp /usr/share/sysvinit/inittab /etc/inittab
  reboot
  apt remove systemd

In Stretch I can install the systemd package and it won't switch the
init system as advertised. In Buster unfortunately installing systemd
pulls systemd-sysv through libpam-systemd and the init system is
switched. The --no-install-recommends flag has to be used to avoid that.
I've filed a bug for systemd (#926316).

Assuming #926316 gets fixed, I think we should focus only on providing a
usable sysvinit script as required by the policy. Supporting people
allergic to systemd and using APT pinning to exclude it is out of topic
(they should only exclude systemd-sysv anyway, not systemd).


> What is the issue with using adduser, which is the standard Debian
> tool doing the same job, instead? After all, depending on systemd
> just to create a system user and group is very heavy-weight.

There is a growing consensus around the idea that imperative maintainer
scripts are a bad thing and they should be replaced with something
declarative. systemd-sysusers does exactly that for the user creation,
that's why I favored it over the traditional adduser.

Regarding the weight, at this point you've already installed the JRE and
Tomcat, the few extra MB for systemd are negligible.


> OK, removed.
> 
> 
> OK, reverted.

Thank you


> Did you have a chance to test this on a buster/systemd Debian?
> I don’t currently have such a machine existing in a meaningful
> way. (Granted, I could probably cobble together some test VM,
> but I’m sure you have something at hand.)

I haven't checked yet.

Emmanuel Bourg