Re: [Man-db-devel] Test failures in man-db > 2.7.6

[Colin Watson]

On Mon, Jul 10, 2017 at 04:09:46PM -0400, Leo Famulari wrote:
> Building man-db 2.7.6 (or 2.7.6.1) in GNU Guix, some of the mandb-N
> tests and the whatis-1 test are failing.
> 
> I haven't tried changing anything in our man-db packaging besides
> bumping the version, and that packaging can be found here:
> 
> https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages/man.scm?id=61adfb00b11cc16a70e60f19fd8e0a838a3ef608#n57
> 
> I noticed that each failing test prints 'the setuid man user "man" does
> not exist'. However, I don't know if this is just a warning or the root
> cause. We do build with '--disable-setuid'.
> 
> I spent some time looking at the changes between 2.7.5 and 2.7.6, but I
> didn't figure out the problem.

2.7.6 changed the meaning of --{enable,disable}-setuid somewhat, as
noted in the NEWS file:

        o The owner of cache files is now configured separately from whether
          man and mandb are installed setuid, using the
          --enable-cache-owner[=USER] option.

Is it your intention that the cache files (e.g. index.db) be owned by
the root user in Guix?  If so, try adding --enable-cache-owner=root.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       address@hidden