bug#37931: Cannot guix refresh -ru util-linux to get updated lsblk

[Marius Bakke]

Bengt Richter <address@hidden> writes:

> On +2019-10-28 23:29:16 +0100, Marius Bakke wrote:
>> The `lsblk` program requires root privileges in order to detect file
>> systems and UUIDs.  I'm guessing your distribution makes it setuid root?
>>
>
> It doesn't  look like it to me (the following snip is from TTY4, where I 
> enabled guix paths and environment,
> so I can see ~/.guix-profile and /usr stuff at the same time):

[...]


> $ which -a lsblk|xargs readlink -f|xargs stat
>   File: /gnu/store/xymkwf57x988q8cny2is1dgzrbr9xdfi-util-linux-2.34/bin/lsblk
>   Size: 135560        Blocks: 272        IO Block: 4096   regular file
> Device: 10304h/66308d Inode: 1186253     Links: 2
> Access: (0555/-r-xr-xr-x)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)
> Access: 2019-11-01 02:38:11.782574923 -0700
> Modify: 1969-12-31 16:00:01.000000000 -0800
> Change: 2019-10-08 18:18:48.226579757 -0700
>  Birth: -
>   File: /usr/bin/lsblk
>   Size: 124992        Blocks: 248        IO Block: 4096   regular file
> Device: 10304h/66308d Inode: 264652      Links: 1
> Access: (0755/-rwxr-xr-x)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)
> Access: 2019-11-01 02:38:55.354524750 -0700
> Modify: 2019-06-27 03:04:01.000000000 -0700
> Change: 2019-07-06 00:59:13.620416635 -0700
>  Birth: -
> $ 
> ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
> │ I see Access: is 0555 vs 0755, so doubt if that should be changed │
> └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Indeed, there are no setuid bits there.

I had a look at the lsblkd source code, and found that it has an
optional dependency on udev:

https://github.com/karelzak/util-linux/blob/ccafadb7c58865f73d209fcfc74483be96cdf64d/misc-utils/lsblk-properties.c

I tried building util-linux with udev support, and got the same output
you expected without needing root privileges:

(define-public util-linux/udev
  (package/inherit
   util-linux
   (name "util-linux-with-udev")
   (inputs
    `(("udev" ,eudev)
      ,@(package-inputs util-linux)))))

Now, eudev already depends on util-linux, so adding udev support to the
regular 'util-linux' package would introduce a circular dependency.

I'm not sure what the best approach here is.  We could add a
'util-linux-minimal' for use in package inputs, and/or add a
udev-enabled variant to %base-packages.

Thoughts?

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