[Pkg-nagios-devel] Bug#479051: Bug#479051: nagios3: wrong home directory for the nagios user

[Stephane Chazelas]

2008-05-04 18:50:13 +0200, Alexander Wirt:
[...]
> > the thing is that the user here was created with a home
> > directory of /var/log/nagios, so I did a grep -r on the source
> > package and found the line above in the nagios.spec file.
> nagios.spec? Debian don't uses spec files. 

You're right,

it seems to be coming from the original nagios source:

$ tar tf nagios3_3.0.1.orig.tar.gz | grep spec
nagios-3.0.1/nagios.spec

Maybe that's where nagios-nrpe maintainers found inspiration
from for creating the nagios user and its home directory in
/var/log/nagios.

> > I can see now that line you quote in
> > ./debian/nagios3-common.postinst
> > 
> > So it seems the culprit is nagios-nrpe-server:
> > /var/lib/dpkg/info/nagios-nrpe-server.preinst:          adduser
> > --system --group --no-create-home --home /var/log/nagios --quiet
> > nagios
> Which is not nagios3. I reassigned the bug to nagios-nrpe. 

agreed thanks.

> > I don't think /var/run/nagios3 is a good choice for a home
> > directory. /var/run is meant to be non-permanent, and a home
> > directory is meant to be the area where to *store* information
> > relevant to a user
> As I said its questionable and will propably changed to /var/lib/nagios3 in
> the near future. 
[...]

I agree it would make more sense.

regards,
Stephane