[Pkg-puppet-devel] Bug#650527: puppet-common postinst fails if user 'puppet' exists but group 'puppet' doesn't

[Michael Goetze]

Package: puppet-common
Version: 2.6.2-5+squeeze3

>From puppet-common.postinst:

# Create the "puppet" user
if ! getent passwd puppet > /dev/null; then
  adduser --quiet --system --group --home /var/lib/puppet  \
    --gecos "Puppet configuration management daemon" \
    puppet
fi

# Create folders common to "puppet" and "puppetmaster", which need
# to be owned by the "puppet" user
install --owner puppet --group puppet --directory \
  /var/lib/puppet/state

When a user 'puppet' exists but no group 'puppet', this fails with

Setting up puppet-common (2.6.2-5+squeeze3) ...
install: invalid group `puppet'
dpkg: error processing puppet-common (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1

At least a more useful error message would be nice.