Bug#1095108: systemd: make systemd the authoritative source of machine-id

[cacin at allfreemail.net]

Package: systemd
Version: 257.2-3
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

there are currently two different files that provide a machine-id

/etc/machine-id
/var/lib/dbus/machine-id

/etc/machine-id is owned by systemd, and is considered a more universal
source of this information.

/var/lib/dbus/machine-id is owned by dbus.

Unfortunately, it has happened before that these two files get out of
sync and contain different information:

https://bugs.debian.org/783716
https://bugs.debian.org/994096#10
https://bugs.debian.org/1040790

Even today, on a fresh debian 12 system (and in trixie too), the two
files have different file modes, /etc/machine-id is 0444 and
/var/lib/dbus/machine-id is 0644

The right solution to this problem is to make /var/lib/dbus/machine-id a
symlink to /etc/machine-id

This is already behavior that is defined in
/usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/dbus.conf but it is not enforced.

Please try to get debian to agree on a single authoritative source of
machine-id, in a single file with a well-known location.