[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#981747: network-manager: NetworkManager does not start in sysvinit system

[Luis]

Package: network-manager
Version: 1.28.0-2+b1
Severity: grave
Tags: newcomer
Justification: renders package unusable
X-Debbugs-Cc: luismb at mailnesia.com

(Alternatively taggable as Severity: critical - see below)

Dear Maintainer,

*** Reporter, please consider answering these questions, where appropriate ***

   * What led up to the situation?

Upgraded from Debian Buster to Debian Bullseye, then rebooted the system into a
new session.

   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)?

Rebooting the system was ineffective.

Copying a previous init file from a cached version of the package was
effective.


   * What was the outcome of this action?

UPGRADE -> Network Manager did not start, nor was listed among the manageable
services. /etc/init.d/network-manager did not exist.

   * What outcome did you expect instead?

UPGRADE -> Network Manager would start, /etc/init.d/network-manager exists and
is runnable, and NM would be listed among the manageable services.

*** End of the template - remove these template lines ***

Machine is using sysvinit as init, and has done so since the times of Debian
Wheezy (except for a clean Stretch install where sysvinit was installed after a
reboot).

Upgrading the system from Debian Buster to Debian Bullseye (at the current apt
tag of 'testing') then rebooting led to NetworkManager no longer starting as
/etc/init.d/network-manager was missing. Without a connection to the internet,
the only reasonable solution was to unpack the previous version of 'network-
manager' in the package cache and copy the required file manually. Had the
cache not been available, this upgrade would have rendered the machine much
more unusable.

Note this is *not* a duplicate of BR #964139 ("please restore init file"). That
BR is a mere wishlist, whereas this bug report is marked "grave" due to real
world problems caused by a removal of a behaviour that is the entire point of a
*service* existing, and the only reason it's not marked as "critical" is that
other network-related utilities were not auto-removed during the upgrade, and
were not affected by this init-removal behaviour; however note that "another
package does not have bugs" should not be a factor in the severity of a bug in
*this* package.

Without previous understanding of available network commands and without a
local package cache, restoring the affected capability requires having
previously installed and disabled an alternative network manager like 'wicd',
or manually writing a compatible init script.




-- System Information:
Debian Release: bullseye/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU threads)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=es_CL.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=es_CL.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=es_CL:es
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages network-manager depends on:
ii  adduser                    3.118
ii  dbus                       1.12.20-1
ii  eudev [udev]               232:3.2.7.3
ii  libaudit1                  1:2.8.5-3.1
ii  libbluetooth3              5.55-1
ii  libc6                      2.31-5
ii  libcurl3-gnutls            7.72.0-1
ii  libelogind0 [libsystemd0]  246.9.1-1+debian1
ii  libeudev1 [libudev1]       232:3.2.7.3
ii  libglib2.0-0               2.66.4-1
ii  libgnutls30                3.7.0-5
ii  libjansson4                2.13.1-1
ii  libmm-glib0                1.14.8-0.1
ii  libndp0                    1.6-1+b1
ii  libnewt0.52                0.52.21-4+b2
ii  libnm0                     1.28.0-2+b1
ii  libpsl5                    0.21.0-1.1
ii  libreadline8               8.1~rc3-1
ii  libselinux1                3.1-2+b1
ii  libteamdctl0               1.31-1
ii  libuuid1                   2.36.1-1
ii  policykit-1                0.105-25.0nosystemd2
ii  wpasupplicant              2:2.9.0-15

Versions of packages network-manager recommends:
pn  dnsmasq-base                            <none>
ii  iptables                                1.8.6-1
ii  libpam-elogind-compat [libpam-systemd]  1.3
pn  modemmanager                            <none>
ii  ppp                                     2.4.9-1+1
ii  wireless-regdb                          2020.04.29-2

Versions of packages network-manager suggests:
ii  isc-dhcp-client  4.4.1-2.1+b2
pn  libteam-utils    <none>

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf changed [not included]

-- no debconf information