[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#634475: dbus: Fails to install if messagebus user already present.

[Simon McVittie]

On Tue, 19 Jul 2011 at 09:54:02 +1000, Peter Chubb wrote:
> Package: dbus
> Version: 1.4.12-4
> 
> I did a routine apt-get upgrade, and found that dbus failed to install.
> 
> Setting up dbus (1.4.12-4) ...
> adduser: The user `messagebus' already exists. Exiting.
> dpkg: error processing dbus (--configure):

Hmm, this isn't meant to be an error, because of the way in which we run
adduser (using --system should mean that creating a user that already exists
is "successful"). It's also meant to be silent, because we use the --quiet
option:

    adduser --system \
            --quiet \
            --home "$MESSAGEHOME" \
            --no-create-home \
            --disabled-password \
            --group "$MESSAGEUSER"

This works for me, with adduser 3.113 (I can run that command, with variables
substituted, and it returns 0 without output) so something is probably
different in your setup.

Does the adduser call in your /var/lib/dpkg/info/dbus.postinst match the
command I quoted above?

Did you already have dbus installed, or was it newly installed during the
upgrade? If it was already installed, which version? (/var/log/apt/ or
/var/log/aptitude* might tell you)

> Versions of packages dbus depends on:
> ii  adduser                       3.113      add and remove users and groups

Did you report this bug from the system where dbus failed? If not, what
version of adduser does that system have? Do you have an older copy of adduser
installed, perhaps in /usr/local or something?

Do you use NIS, LDAP or something to obtain users and groups, or do you
just use the normal passwd/shadow/group/gshadow files?

If you have enough backups of /etc/passwd to be able to answer these questions:
what were the messagebus user's home directory, numeric UID, and primary group
ID before the upgrade? What was the messagebus group's numeric GID?
Did you have any other users or groups whose numeric UID/GID collided with
messagebus?

Thanks,
    S