[Pkg-systemd-maintainers] Bug#619244: systemd: unowned files after purge (policy 6.8, 10.8): /etc/machine-id

[Simon McVittie]

On Wed, 16 Apr 2014 at 07:41:43 +0200, Tobias Frost wrote:
> I hacked something together for discussion: 
> In postinst, lets check for /etc/machine-id validity, and if it is valid
> copy it to /var/lib/dbus/machine-id. (I prefered cp instead over links
> to avoid dangling links if e.g systemd is purged; Just deleting won't
> work either as there are some programs with hard-coded paths to dbus' id
> without fallback to systemd's)  
> 
> However, I'm unsure if this needs to be handled: If dbus is updated and
> the both machine-ids are different, dbus's machine-id-file will change
> at runtime, which could cause problems according dbus-uuidgen(1). 

If the two files are already different, the damage has already been done;
I don't think we should make it worse by unilaterally changing one of them.

What I had in mind was more like: change dbus-uuidgen so if /etc/machine-id
exists but /var/lib/dbus/machine-id doesn't, it copies /etc/machine-id
instead of creating a new thing. I've put patches on an upstream bug
for review: <https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=77941>

I am the most active upstream maintainer of dbus, so normally I'd be the
one reviewing patches; but I wrote these patches, so... if any of you have
an interest in this bug, please review them and tell me if they have any
problems.

    S