thud systemd root home wrong

thud systemd root home wrong

[Jean-Francois Dagenais]

Hi all,

Although there is 0005-Make-root-s-home-directory-configurable.patch and EXTRA_OEMESON += "-Droothomedir=${ROOT_HOME}".

Here's the test setup and result:
root@host-01:~# cat /lib/systemd/system/testroothome.service 
[Unit]
Description=Test root home

[Service]
User=root
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c "echo HOME:$HOME"

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
root@host-01:~# systemctl status testroothome
● testroothome.service - Test root home
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/testroothome.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead)

Jan 11 14:32:10 host-01 systemd[1]: Started Test root home.
Jan 11 14:32:10 host-01 bash[1971]: HOME:/root
root@host-01:~# echo $HOME
/home/root


/root is incorrect as shown last. ROOT_HOME is set in my untouched bitbake.conf from poky.

Very preliminary inspection of v239 of systemd's source in it's workdir suggests that although the meson build config is changed to accept roothomedir as an option, the source code doesn't mention it.

Looking at the history of xxxx-Make-root-s-home-directory-configurable.patch, it seems to have suffered quite a lot through the systemd upgrades to the point it has become useless?

Before I dig deeper, I wanted to check with the community.

Thanks for any pointers!

Re: thud systemd root home wrong

[Jérôme Carretero]

On Fri, 11 Jan 2019 09:44:04 -0500
Jean-Francois Dagenais <jeff.dagenais@gmail.com> wrote:

> ExecStart=/bin/bash -c "echo HOME:$HOME"

Hi Jeff,


Sounds like you like tackling root causes ;)
I remember something like that and instead cowardly did:

 Environment=HOME=/home/root


Regards,

-- 
Jérôme

Re: thud systemd root home wrong

[Burton, Ross]

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On Fri, 11 Jan 2019 at 14:44, Jean-Francois Dagenais <
jeff.dagenais@gmail.com> wrote:

> Looking at the history of
> xxxx-Make-root-s-home-directory-configurable.patch, it seems to have
> suffered quite a lot through the systemd upgrades to the point it has
> become useless?
>
> Before I dig deeper, I wanted to check with the community.


Sounds feasibly, patches like that maintained long-term do suffer from
bitrot.  Would you be able to dig and fix this?

Ross

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Re: thud systemd root home wrong

[Jean-Francois Dagenais]

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> On Jan 11, 2019, at 10:37 AM, Burton, Ross <ross.burton@intel.com> wrote:
> 
> Sounds feasibly, patches like that maintained long-term do suffer from bitrot.  Would you be able to dig and fix this?

I will give it a shot yes, stay tuned. Not at all familiar with the code base, any hints? Or maybe all the hints I need are in previous (pre rot) versions of the patch?

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Re: thud systemd root home wrong

[Burton, Ross]

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I'd just grep the systemd source for "/root" and replace the relevant ones
with ROOTHOMEDIR.  There's probably not that many...

On Fri, 11 Jan 2019 at 15:53, Jean-Francois Dagenais <
jeff.dagenais@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> On Jan 11, 2019, at 10:37 AM, Burton, Ross <ross.burton@intel.com> wrote:
>
> Sounds feasibly, patches like that maintained long-term do suffer from
> bitrot.  Would you be able to dig and fix this?
>
>
> I will give it a shot yes, stay tuned. Not at all familiar with the code
> base, any hints? Or maybe all the hints I need are in previous (pre rot)
> versions of the patch?
>

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Re: thud systemd root home wrong

[Jean-Francois Dagenais]

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> On Jan 11, 2019, at 10:55 AM, Burton, Ross <ross.burton@intel.com> wrote:
> 
> I'd just grep the systemd source for "/root" and replace the relevant ones with ROOTHOMEDIR.  There's probably not that many...

Were there any plans to submit this upstream? Seems a worthy mod. Although might not be a need for regular distros.

Should I apply this on poky/master and against v240? Or modify the existing patch on thud? Seems like, with Jérôme's workaround, this is not a crucial issue...

Thanks for the help!

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Re: thud systemd root home wrong

[Jean-Francois Dagenais]

Answering myself here...

> On Jan 14, 2019, at 1:18 PM, Jean-Francois Dagenais <jeff.dagenais@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Were there any plans to submit this upstream? Seems a worthy mod. Although might not be a need for regular distros.

I looked at it closer and does seem like its not upstream-able. At least, not in such a simple form.

There are tests and units in the source tree which would need to by dynamically updated. On top of that, the man pages give some good arguments to keep root as "/root":

/root
           The home directory of the root user. The root user's home directory is located outside of /home in order to make sure the root user may log in even without /home being available and mounted.

You'd be hard pressed to get the systemd people to agree to change this I think.

So the problem is certainly becoming a bit too big for the amount of extra time I can afford right now.

For the record, since we don't actually require root's home to be in /home, I will add ROOT_HOME = "/root" in my distro file as a perfectly fine workaround for our use.

I will try to help any brave soul who tries to tackle this in the near future! ;)

Cheers!
/jfd

Re: thud systemd root home wrong

[Burton, Ross]

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On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 at 18:35, Jean-Francois Dagenais <
jeff.dagenais@gmail.com> wrote:

> > On Jan 14, 2019, at 1:18 PM, Jean-Francois Dagenais <
> jeff.dagenais@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Were there any plans to submit this upstream? Seems a worthy mod.
> Although might not be a need for regular distros.
>
> I looked at it closer and does seem like its not upstream-able. At least,
> not in such a simple form.
>

Upstream have already rejected this, see the Upstream-Status header in the
(broken) patch.


> There are tests and units in the source tree which would need to by
> dynamically updated. On top of that, the man pages give some good arguments
> to keep root as "/root":
>

I'd say you can ignore the tests, but the rest shouldn't be *that* tricky.

If you're not going to fix this, could you please file a bug in
bugzilla.yoctoproject.org so this doesn't get forgotten about?

Thanks,
Ross

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Re: thud systemd root home wrong

[Jean-Francois Dagenais]

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> On Jan 14, 2019, at 19:42, Burton, Ross <ross.burton@intel.com> wrote:
> 
> If you're not going to fix this, could you please file a bug in bugzilla.yoctoproject.org <http://bugzilla.yoctoproject.org/> so this doesn't get forgotten about?
> 

https://bugzilla.yoctoproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13141

Sorry I couldn't do more.

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Re: thud systemd root home wrong

[Burton, Ross]

No problem, thanks!

On Tue, 15 Jan 2019 at 01:09, Jean-Francois Dagenais
<jeff.dagenais@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Jan 14, 2019, at 19:42, Burton, Ross <ross.burton@intel.com> wrote:
>
> If you're not going to fix this, could you please file a bug in bugzilla.yoctoproject.org so this doesn't get forgotten about?
>
>
> https://bugzilla.yoctoproject.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13141
>
> Sorry I couldn't do more.