Bug#887343: systemd-timesyncd does not start with DynamicUser=yes (requires libnss-systemd)

[Michael Biebl]

Hi Guido

Am 15.01.2018 um 12:14 schrieb Guido Günther:
> Hi,
> On Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 11:24:33AM +0100, Michael Biebl wrote:
>> Am 15.01.2018 um 10:18 schrieb Guido Günther:

>> It requires libnss-systemd, yes. Do you not have it installed?
>> It's a recommends, so should be installed by default
> 
> See above: "without installing recommends". My whole point is that the

Ok, just wanted to make 100% sure libnss-systemd was not installed. Even
with recommends disabled, it might have been installed.

> systemd package installs a service that won't even start without the
> recommends which looks somewhat wrong to me. I would expect that
> 
>     systemctl list-units --failed
> 
> would not contain any failed systemd units even without installing
> recommends. If you think this is all wrong free to close it.

My first instinct was to say, if you disable recommends, then you should
know what you do and it's up to the user to deal with the results.

Then again, systemd (or rather systemd-sysv, which recommends
libnss-systemd) is special, as it is installed by d-i at a stage where
recommends are apparently not considered yet.
I know too little about the d-i internals, but I've just tested with the
latest buster d-i daily image, and after the system installation,
libnss-systemd was indeed missing.

I vaguely remember that we had the same issue with libpam-systemd.
We wanted to make it possible to not libpam-systemd so chose a
Recommends but also noticed, that it was not installed by d-i. Which is
why we bumped the severity of libpam-systemd to standard, so it would be
installed at a later stage by the "standard" task.

We could do the same for libnss-systemd.
But somehow I think it would be better to just bite the bullet and
upgrade it to a hard dependency. DynamicUser=yes is a feature which we
expect will be used more frequently in the future (also by other
packages) and should just work ootb imho.
libnss-systemd doesn't pull in any additional dependencies and weighs
about 350K.
Do we have convincing use cases where it would be beneficial to not have
libnss-systemd installed?

Thoughts?


Michael


-- 
Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the
universe are pointed away from Earth?

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