Bug#990349: systemd-sysusers keeps creating systemd-timesync and systemd-coredump

[Michael Biebl]

Am 26.06.2021 um 17:38 schrieb Christoph Anton Mitterer:
> Package: systemd
> Version: 247.3-5
> Severity: normal
> 
> 
> 
> Hey.
> 
> I was recently doing some manual cleanup of stale users/grous and since
> the systemd-timesync and systemd-coredump users/groups a no longer created
> by the systemd package itself (but rather the systemd-timesync and
> systemd-coredump packages) I've removed them, too.

Fwiw, this might change once 
https://salsa.debian.org/systemd-team/systemd/-/merge_requests/121 is merged

Then systemd would just setup all groups that are used by systemd (and 
sub-packages).

> Only to find out to my surprise that they were automagically recreated
> again ;-) ... after which I've learned about systemd-sysusers.
> 
> 
> I have no problem with it doing that - if it's really necessary for something.
> 
> But since you guys already splitted out the user creation in the maintainer
> scripts to the systemd-timesync and systemd-coredump packages,... wouldn't
> it conceptually make sense to do the same with
> /usr/lib/sysusers.d/systemd.conf
> ?
> 
> I.e. have:
> /usr/lib/sysusers.d/systemd-timesync.conf
> /usr/lib/sysusers.d/systemd-coredump.conf
> shipped by the respective packages, and *they* do the recreation?

Personally, I don't think it's worth the effort.
You can try to convince upstream to split up the (monolithic) 
systemd.conf this way though.
If this is not happening upstream, we'd have yet another patch against 
upstream which we never can get rid off again, so I'm not very keen to 
maintain a patch for such a minor issue.

Regards,
Michael