[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#1099534: dbus-system-bus-common: Fails to install when messagebus user already exists

[Simon McVittie]

Control: tags -1 - moreinfo
Control: reassign -1 adduser 3.143
Control: affects -1 + src:dbus

On Tue, 04 Mar 2025 at 18:17:51 +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
>On Tue, 2025-03-04 at 15:52 +0000, Simon McVittie wrote:
>> On Tue, 04 Mar 2025 at 16:35:45 +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
>> > the package dbus-system-bus-common fails to install when the messagebus user already
>> > exists which seems to be the case on some systems:
>> >
>> > Setting up dbus-system-bus-common (1.16.2-1) ...
>> > fatal: The user `messagebus' already exists, but is not a system user. Exiting.
>>
>> Specifically, it looks as though on the affected system, the messagebus
>> user exists outside the Debian-Policy-defined system user range 100-999
>> (or possibly adduser is misidentifying it as being outside that range).
>
>This is inside a schroot on a buildd and it looks like something recently
>changed, either with the dbus package or any other package.
>
>> Please provide details of the messagebus user/group? This should do it:
>>
>>      getent passwd messagebus
>>      getent group messagebus
>
>(sid-alpha-sbuild)root at alpha-sc-03:/# getent passwd messagebus
>messagebus:x:104:111::/nonexistent:/usr/sbin/nologin
>(sid-alpha-sbuild)root at alpha-sc-03:/# getent group messagebus
>messagebus:x:111:
>(sid-alpha-sbuild)root at alpha-sc-03:/#

That's certainly in the range for system users, so I think this looks like
an adduser issue: it seems to be mis-identifying messagebus as being in the
range intended for human users?

Possibly already fixed in adduser git (but not yet in a release) by:
https://salsa.debian.org/debian/adduser/-/commit/9bb8e6c9df53df11e6fd8b851a8a3e0efba1f9aa

     smcv