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


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