deb: use symlink to install systemd-sysusers

[thaJeztah]

• follow-up to feat: manage docker group with systemd-sysusers (carry #1187) #1195
• implementing all: manage docker group with systemd-sysusers #1187 (comment)

---

deb: use symlink to install systemd-sysusers

Using dh_installsysusers(1):

FILES

debian/package.sysusers
If the file exists, it will be installed as /usr/lib/sysusers.d/package.conf.

- How I did it

- How to verify it

- Description for the changelog

- A picture of a cute animal (not mandatory but encouraged)

[thaJeztah]

With this PR, there's a (dangling) symlink added, similar to the existing ones;

ls -la deb/common/
total 80
drwx------  15 thajeztah  staff   480 May 20 13:51 ./
drwx------  21 thajeztah  staff   672 May 20 13:38 ../
-rw-r--r--   1 thajeztah  staff  4382 May 20 12:53 control
-rw-r--r--   1 thajeztah  staff    15 Jun 21  2023 docker-ce-cli.manpages
-rw-r--r--   1 thajeztah  staff    12 Dec 26 14:14 docker-ce.dirs
lrwxr-xr-x   1 thajeztah  staff    53 Dec 26 14:14 docker-ce.docker.default@ -> ../engine/contrib/init/sysvinit-debian/docker.default
lrwxr-xr-x   1 thajeztah  staff    45 Dec 26 14:14 docker-ce.docker.init@ -> ../engine/contrib/init/sysvinit-debian/docker
lrwxr-xr-x   1 thajeztah  staff    45 Dec 26 14:14 docker-ce.docker.service@ -> ../engine/contrib/init/systemd/docker.service
lrwxr-xr-x   1 thajeztah  staff    44 Dec 26 14:14 docker-ce.docker.socket@ -> ../engine/contrib/init/systemd/docker.socket
lrwxr-xr-x   1 thajeztah  staff    46 May 20 13:51 docker-ce.docker.sysusers@ -> ../engine/contrib/systemd-sysusers/docker.conf
-rw-r--r--   1 thajeztah  staff    46 Dec 26 14:14 docker-ce.maintscript
-rw-r--r--   1 thajeztah  staff    18 Apr  2 16:14 docker-ce.manpages
-rw-r--r--   1 thajeztah  staff    14 Jun 21  2023 docs
-rwxr-xr-x   1 thajeztah  staff  8864 May 20 13:51 rules*
drwxr-xr-x   3 thajeztah  staff    96 Dec 26 13:18 source/

Something isn't working with this, but perhaps I'm either using the wrong name for the symlink, or we need to invoke something else?

I tried to install the package in a container;

apt-get -y  update && apt-get -y install ca-certificates curl
install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/debian/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
echo   "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/linux/debian $(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
apt-get -y update
apt install ./docker-ce_0.0.0~20250520085713.af09051-1~debian.13~trixie_arm64.deb

After that, I don't see a file in /usr/lib/sysusers.d/

ls /usr/lib/sysusers.d/
basic.conf  dbus.conf  systemd-journal.conf  systemd-network.conf  systemd-timesync.conf

Also looked it it was perhaps installed in another location;

docker diff upbeat_euclid | grep sysusers
A /usr/share/man/man5/sysusers.d.5.gz
A /usr/share/man/man8/systemd-sysusers.8.gz
A /usr/share/man/man8/systemd-sysusers.service.8.gz
A /usr/bin/systemd-sysusers
A /usr/lib/sysusers.d
A /usr/lib/sysusers.d/basic.conf
A /usr/lib/sysusers.d/dbus.conf
A /usr/lib/sysusers.d/systemd-journal.conf
A /usr/lib/sysusers.d/systemd-network.conf
A /usr/lib/sysusers.d/systemd-timesync.conf
A /usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-sysusers.service
A /usr/lib/systemd/system/sysinit.target.wants/systemd-sysusers.service

[thaJeztah]

oh! We probably need something like these to set --name=docker!

docker-ce-packaging/deb/common/rules

Lines 136 to 142 in fc77027

	override_dh_installinit:
	# use "docker" as our service name, not "docker-ce"
	dh_installinit --name=docker
	override_dh_installsystemd:
	# use "docker" as our service name, not "docker-ce"
	dh_installsystemd --name=docker

[thaJeztah]

Tried adding this, but that also doesn't seem to do the trick 😞 😢

[tianon]

I figured out what's missing -- it's not added to the sequence by default until debhelper 14 (which is still a dev version), but if you add dh-sequence-installsysusers to Build-Depends, it should inject it. I've implemented this successfully in my own packages in tianon/debian-moby#24 👍

[thaJeztah]

Thanks for digging!! We ultimately backed out the patch for now (I thought my patch worked, but turned out it didn't pick up the feature), but @p5 also started to try and fix it.

I think with this info, we have a path forward to bring it back in ❤️

[tianon]

So in theory, this should be enough:

$ git --no-pager diff --staged --irreversible-delete
diff --git a/deb/common/control b/deb/common/control
index e2438b9..48b9561 100644
--- a/deb/common/control
+++ b/deb/common/control
@@ -6,8 +6,9 @@ Build-Depends: bash,
                bash-completion,
                ca-certificates,
                cmake,
+               debhelper-compat (= 13),
                dh-apparmor,
-               debhelper-compat (= 12),
+               dh-sequence-installsysusers,
                gcc,
                git,
                libc-dev,
diff --git a/deb/common/docker-ce.docker.sysusers b/deb/common/docker-ce.docker.sysusers
new file mode 120000
index 0000000..eddc903
--- /dev/null
+++ b/deb/common/docker-ce.docker.sysusers
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+../engine/contrib/systemd-sysusers/docker.conf
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/deb/common/docker-ce.postinst b/deb/common/docker-ce.postinst
deleted file mode 100755
index eeef6ca..0000000
diff --git a/deb/common/rules b/deb/common/rules
index a25eae2..3fd39ae 100755
--- a/deb/common/rules
+++ b/deb/common/rules
@@ -141,6 +141,10 @@ override_dh_installsystemd:
 	# use "docker" as our service name, not "docker-ce"
 	dh_installsystemd --name=docker
 
+override_dh_installsysusers:
+	# use "docker" as our service name, not "docker-ce"
+	dh_installsysusers --name=docker
+
 override_dh_shlibdeps:
 	dh_shlibdeps --dpkg-shlibdeps-params=--ignore-missing-info
 

[thaJeztah]

Also tried adding symlinks named docker.sysusers and docker-ce.sysusers, but that also didn't seem to have effect 😞

[thaJeztah]

Ah! It's because we're still on 12??

docker-ce-packaging/deb/common/control

Line 10 in fc77027

debhelper-compat (= 12),

https://tracker.debian.org/media/packages/d/debhelper/changelog-13.3.4

debhelper (13.3) unstable; urgency=medium

...
  * dh_installsysusers: New tool to install and integrate sysusers
    into debian packaging.  Thanks to Michael Biebl and Moritz
    Muehlenhoff for feedback and initial testing.
    (Closes: #962384)

[thaJeztah]

Doesn't look like adding debhelper-compat (= 13), helped either 😞