Give more useful error message when /etc/login.defs isn't present

[Merlin04]

Some distros (in my case, opensuse tumbleweed) don't have an /etc/login.defs - instead, it's located at /usr/etc/login.defs. If you try running regreet on a standard tumbleweed system, it panics with a generic unable to read file error, not saying what file it tried to read. Ideally, it would try the /usr path if the normal path isn't found, and if that still doesn't exist, then print an error indicating that neither file was found.

[max-ishere]

Hmm, I looked up the man login.defs for tumbleweed:
https://manpages.opensuse.org/Tumbleweed/login_defs/login.defs.5.en.html
and even there it says the file should be at /etc.

The /etc/login.defs file defines the site-specific configuration for the shadow password suite. This file is required. Absence of this file will not prevent system operation, but will probably result in undesirable operation.

🤷 ...

Anyways I can work on fixing this one.

As for the location of the file, are you sure it only exists in /usr and not symlinked to /etc? If it is actually moved there I can add an ENV to override it's location at build time.

And considering the fact that regreet is not packaged on tumbleweeed (https://software.opensuse.org/search?q=regreet&baseproject=openSUSE%3AFactory) you have probably built it from source so I think you can test out the patch.

[max-ishere]

@Merlin04 can you test #91 please, there should be a warning in the logs now. You dont have to install it system wide, just run

fakegreet 'cargo r'

If the issue is resolved, I can add a build time env constant and that should resolve this one

[Merlin04]

Sorry for the delay - it appears to be working, I'm getting this error in the logs when I test with #91:

2024-10-18T18:39:02.341228919-07:00 WARN regreet::sysutil: Failed to read /etc/login.defs

Maybe the man page is out of date? but it appears that the file in /etc/login.defs just doesn't exist: https://forums.opensuse.org/t/on-installing-keyd-configuration-error-unknown-item-useradd-cmd/179060/4

[max-ishere]

Welp, at least it doesn't panic anymore. I will work on adding a const override via ENVs, should probably add an override for the default values for UID_MIN and UID_MAX because the defaults may differ across distros too?...

[max-ishere]

@rharish101 I think the override path should allow : separated paths, this way the source can hardcode the default to be both etc and usr, but I doubt the distro maintainers would find this useful...

[max-ishere]

@Merlin04 I pushed an update to #91, it will now try all paths from a list and this list can be overriden at compile time. So now it should work on your distro without you doing anything special.

[max-ishere]

@Merlin04 does the 🎉 mean the issue is resolved by #91?

[Merlin04]

Yeah, I think so!

[max-ishere]

Okie

[mbekkomo]

In Solus, neither /etc/login.defs nor /usr/etc/login.defs exist.

[mbekkomo]

I just rechecked, it exists in /usr/share/defaults/etc/login.defs.

[max-ishere]

I did a quick search and this post says its in /etc. My suspicion is that the /usr/share/defaults contains default values and is not supposed to be mutated. However it could be the same confusing path as /etc/default/grub. This is easy to verify. Can you open your /usr/share/defaults/etc/login.defs, remember the UID_MAX value and then run useradd to change it:

useradd --key UID_MIN=60001

man useradd

Then see if the override is placed into /usr or a file is created in /etc.

@Merlin04 I am assuming that for you, it would just go into /usr/etc/login.defs, but can you check too?