Bug#329403: [Buildd-tools-devel] Bug#329403: schroot: Clobbers files in the chroot without warning

[Roger Leigh]

Daniel Jacobowitz <dan at debian.org> writes:

Hi Dan,

> When I upgraded to this version of schroot, it suddenly started modifying
> files inside the chroot without saying so.  The man page documents the new
> run-parts mechanism, but doesn't say anything about the new scripts which
> modify /etc/passwd et cetera.
[...]
> This is extremely rude behavior, and I'm not real happy that it came in
> without any warning.  Meanwhile, I am rearranging my setup to make the
> cloned copy read-only...

I'm very sorry this caused you some trouble.  I was unhappy with this
myself, and I've been considering how best to fix it in 0.1.6 over the
last week.

Some ideas include:

- Putting the scripts in a separate directory, and creating symlinks
  to the setup.d directory, just like for /etc/rcN.d/.  I'm not sure
  how best to handle symlink creation and removal however.
- Using debconf to ask if the symlinks should be maintained
  automatically.
- Adding a setup configuration file for the scripts to source, which
  can alter their behaviour.  This could default to doing nothing, but
  could also be configured with debconf.

If you have any thoughts about how you would prefer the scripts to be
handled, I would be very happy to consider them.  I'd like to avoid
clobbering stuff accidentally, as happened in this case, but also not
require large amounts of manual setup, such as creating lots of
symlinks.


Regards,
Roger

-- 
Roger Leigh
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