I think there is no active or planned work to bring zsys further on the
time being. This only impacted the new user addition and I we can drop
the patch for now without impacting too many users.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/2049529

Title:
  Ubuntu delta causes `can't open /dev/null: No such file or directory`
  errors in minimal environments (chroot/unshare)

Status in adduser package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in shadow package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in adduser source package in Noble:
  Confirmed
Status in shadow source package in Noble:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  Hi,

  I was digging into fixing `autopkgtest`'s `unshare` testsuite, and the
  rabbit hole led me here.

  Here is a very quick reproducer, first:

  Start a fresh Ubuntu VM. Here is a quick path, but other ways should do fine:
  ```
  $ cd /tmp
  $ autopkgtest-buildvm-ubuntu-cloud -a amd64 -r noble
  $ kvm -m 1G -snapshot -hda autopkgtest-noble-amd64.img
  ```

  Now in the VM:
  ```
  $ sudo apt install -y mmdebstrap
  $ mmdebstrap noble /tmp/rootfs
  [...]
  $ sudo useradd --create-home --root /tmp/rootfs user1
  can't open /dev/null: No such file or directory
  ```

  The line `can't open /dev/null: No such file or directory` is printed
  on `stderr`, and that's unexpected by the part of the code I was
  debugging in the first place.

  Digging a bit led me to that line that does the printing:
  
https://git.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/shadow/tree/debian/patches/1015_add_zsys_support.patch#n69

  There seem to me that there are multiple issues with that patch:
  * Why try to call `zsysctl` in every case without first checking that it 
would be relevant: ZFS is not even installed on the VM we just created, less 
alone it has any ZFS volume/pool/whatever.
  * Obviously, when creating a user in a `chroot`, `/dev/null` won't exist 
unless mapped, and `useradd` is perfectly aware of that, because it even does 
the `chroot` call itself! But why even try to mess with ZFS in the `chroot` 
case in the first place?

  From what history @brian-murray told me, this patch was part of some
  ZFS experimentation in the past. Maybe that experimentation is now
  finished, and that patch could be dropped? At the very least it needs
  improvements, imho.

  EDIT: Just for context on why this issue appears only now: I was
  trying to fix the `unshare` testsuite in `autopkgtest`, which is
  pretty recent (2022) (https://salsa.debian.org/ci-
  team/autopkgtest/-/commit/d1671f94f68bce9a0c6793310a9f8b79b4e919a5)
  even upstream on Debian, and has never worked yet on Ubuntu.

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