Control: tags -1 + patch
On Mon, Feb 23, 2026 at 12:01:48AM +0100, Samuel Thibault wrote:
> opensysusers' systemd-sysusers fails to create the _ssh group:
>
> Setting up openssh-client (1:10.2p1-5) ...
> groupadd: invalid group ID ''
> chgrp: invalid group: ‘_ssh’
> dpkg: error processing package openssh-client (--configure):
> old openssh-client package postinst maintainer script subprocess failed with
> exit status 1
>
> the content of openssh-client.conf is just
>
> g _ssh
>
> I guess opensysusers somehow doesn't like not having even "- -", while
> systemd is fine with that.
What do you think of this patch?
diff --git a/sysusers b/sysusers
index 0e09217..8e5187d 100755
--- a/sysusers
+++ b/sysusers
@@ -81,7 +81,7 @@ parse_string() {
#eval "set -- $1" # do not use eval, see CVE-2021-40084
set -- $1
suffix="${1#?}"
- type="${1%%${suffix}}" name="$2" id="$3" gecos="$4" home="$5"
+ type="${1%%${suffix}}" name="$2" id="${3:--}" gecos="${4:--}" home="$5"
# and now set the GECOS field without eval
if [ "${type}" = u ]; then
