Bug#1059216: Problem configuring polkitd after upgrade

[Simon McVittie]

Control: reassign -1 systemd
Control: affects -1 + polkitd

On Thu, 21 Dec 2023 at 12:58:09 +0100, Adamo Reggiani wrote:
> During upgrading from Debian 11 Bullseye to Debian 12 Bookworm I received an error on polkitd configuration which also blocks other dependencies (network-manager, modemmanager, pkexec, colord, ...)
> 
> Configurazione di polkitd (122-3)...
> Creating group 'polkitd' with GID 997.
> Creating user 'polkitd' (polkit) with UID 997 and GID 997.
> Failed to add existing group "tty" to temporary gshadow file: Invalid argument
> dpkg: errore nell'elaborare il pacchetto polkitd (--configure):
> 
> Tried do uninstall polkitd, reinstall it manually, same behavior.
> 
> I am using Debian GNU/Linux 12.4, kernel 6.1.0-16-amd64

According to codesearch.debian.net, the message starting with "Failed
to add existing group" seems to come from systemd-sysusers, so I'm
reassigning this to systemd. polkitd itself does not do anything with the
tty group, so this seems like an internal error inside systemd-sysusers?

polkitd is relatively unusual in that it uses systemd-sysusers to create
its system user in the postinst, rather than using adduser. If there is a
problem with systemd-sysusers on some systems, polkitd could work around it
if necessary by going back to having adduser as a hard dependency (although
I'd prefer to reduce the need for the Debian-specific adduser over time).

    smcv