autopkgtest changes hostname in a bad way

[Martin Pitt]

In scalingstack instances:

# hostname
localhost

# cat /etc/hostname
adt

This confuses e. g. postfix tests.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

This is somehow specific to the postfix tests, I suppose they change the hostname at some point. In the instances /etc/hostname is adt, and on boot I clearly see

  Apr 14 09:41:31 adt systemd[1]: Set hostname to <adt>.

but it gets changed later on. I don't get that with other tests, so this isn't a general fault of the infra or cloud-init or similar.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Reopening after talking to Lamont and reassigning to postfix.

  debian/tests/postfix:hostname localhost

This is very dubious, and a bit unexpected. It should *at least* also update /etc/hostname, but "localhost" has a special meaning. So if you need a predictable host name to simplify the tests, please use something else.

[Christian Ehrhardt  (paelzer)]

Hi Martin,
is it possible that this was fixed a long time ago?
I mean the tests still overwrite hostname - that is bad but not critical as the test systems should be ephemeral right?

Just on the day of your last post LaMont made a change to postfix in https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/postfix/3.1.0-3
Since that (and before) Tests are fine.

I wonder did this back then fail the tests for you?
Or did it affect the scalingstack system in some way?

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Indeed http://autopkgtest.ubuntu.com/packages/postfix looks fine now. Yes, the postfix tests were failing back then and the /etc/hostname vs. actual hostname discrepancy was the cause.