Package: debhelper Version: 4.2.31 Severity: normal Hi,
When installing or upgrading gnome packages, the postinst/prerm scripts sometimes create gnome-related directories in /root: .gconf, .gconfd, .gnome, .gnome2, .gnome2_private. These directories are all empty or contain empty files. Here is part of the code that debhelper writes into these scripts: HOME=/root GCONF_CONFIG_SOURCE=`gconftool-2 --get-default-source` \ gconftool-2 \ --makefile-install-rule $SCHEMA_LOCATION/$SCHEMA > /dev/null See also Bug#116898. I think, using 'HOME=/root' is bad for two reasons: (a) According to FHS, the home directory of root may be a different one than /root. (b) More important, simply installing/upgrading packages should not create files in any user's home, especially not in root's. Perhaps it would be better to use something like HOME=`mktemp -d` and to remove this temporary directory afterwards. Regards, Holger -- System Information: Debian Release: 3.1 APT prefers testing APT policy: (800, 'testing'), (700, 'unstable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.8.1 Locale: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] (charmap=ISO-8859-15) Versions of packages debhelper depends on: ii binutils 2.15-5 The GNU assembler, linker and bina ii coreutils [fileutils] 5.2.1-2 The GNU core utilities ii debconf-utils 1.4.30.11 debconf utilities ii dpkg-dev 1.10.27 Package building tools for Debian ii file 4.12-1 Determines file type using "magic" ii fileutils 5.2.1-2 The GNU file management utilities ii html2text 1.3.2a-1 An advanced HTML to text converter ii perl 5.8.4-6 Larry Wall's Practical Extraction ii po-debconf 0.8.21 manage translated Debconf template -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]