[debian-mysql] Bug#1023778: TMPDIR behaviour in maintainer scripts [was: Re: Bug#1023778: mysql-server-8.0: fails to restart on upgrade with libpam-tmpdir]

[Robie Basak]

On Thu, Nov 10, 2022 at 05:37:53PM +0100, Tollef Fog Heen wrote:
> I think it's more wide than that: If you change UID, you need to
> sanitise the environment.  Your HOME is likely to be wrong.  PATH might
> very well be pointing at directories which are not appropriate for the
> user you're changing the UID to, etc.

I don't think that this is necessarily obviously the case in general.
For example, I often use "sudo -s" and *don't* want HOME reset. It
depends on the purpose of taking different privileges as to what is
appropriate to reset.

> I'm not sure this is libpam-tmpdir specific, but rather a bit more
> general: what are the expectations that maintainer scripts can have
> about the environment they're running in, and how do we make those
> expectations hold?  This should probably then be documented in policy.

Agreed, but also, we need a specific answer for TMPDIR. We pass things
into maintainer scripts because we want to change their behaviour (eg.
DEBIAN_FRONTEND). So which specific variables are required to be reset
by maintainer scripts and under what circumstances?
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