Hi Marc, On Tue, Jul 15, 2025 at 10:11:22AM +0200, Marc Haber wrote: > > The slurm user is not actually used in the package where it is created, > > but only in three other packages that depend on it. It is included there > > to simplify the process of removing one of them while keeping the other. > > It was placed in the preinst script out of an abundance of caution. > > I would recommend to have the adduser call (it SHOULD really just be one > single line) in the postinst of every pakage needing the user. If you need > scaffolding around adduser in postinst, it is likly that I would consider > that a bug in adduser and act appropriately (but we're frozen at the > moment).
The only check I perform before calling adduser is verifying whether the user already exists. This allows the flexibility to use Slurm with a different UID in case our fixed UID conflicts with the site's policy. > I would also recommend to not remove your user on package deinstallation. This would greatly simplify things. Is this a common practice? > Thank you. It is usually fine to have adduser in preinst but then your > package must be prepared to be able to run with the adduser from oldstable > during upgrade. This is kind of a challenge to test, and that's the reason I > recommend not to do this without having a VERY good reason. I haven’t noticed any changes affecting the command-line options I use, and my invocation of adduser has remained more or less the same for years. Am I underestimating any potential pitfalls? > > Regarding the coexistence of the two methods for adding the user, I > > accepted the merge request as submitted because I assumed there might be > > systems not using systemd. > > I haven't really thought about whether this might make sense, but just be > aware that this is an unusual pattern that has been seldomly tried. Thanks for the advice and for all your comments in general. Best regards, -- Gennaro Oliva
