tomcat9 fails to install in 18.04

[Balint Reczey]

# apt install tomcat9
...
Setting up tomcat9 (9.0.16-3~18.04) ...
[/usr/lib/sysusers.d/tomcat9.conf:7] Trailing garbage.

Creating config file /etc/tomcat9/tomcat-users.xml with new version
chown: invalid group: ‘root:tomcat’
dpkg: error processing package tomcat9 (--configure):
 installed tomcat9 package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.27-3ubuntu1) ...
Processing triggers for ureadahead (0.100.0-20) ...
Processing triggers for systemd (237-3ubuntu10.15) ...
Processing triggers for ca-certificates (20180409) ...
Updating certificates in /etc/ssl/certs...
0 added, 0 removed; done.
Running hooks in /etc/ca-certificates/update.d...

done.
done.
Processing triggers for rsyslog (8.32.0-1ubuntu4) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 tomcat9
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

[Balint Reczey (rbalint)]

The issue seems to be in systemd-sysusers, but to be released to bionic tomcat9 needs to either depend on a fixed systemd or create the user by other means.

[Balint Reczey (rbalint)]

Fixed it in tomcat9 only, by not setting shell in sysusers.d/tomcat9.conf .
The slightly ugly part is that systemd sets the default shell to
/sbin/nologin , not /usr/sbin/nologin that exists on Ubuntu.
The effect is the same, user can't log in it is just a little ugly and with mergedusr the problem goes away thus I have not filed a bug for it.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

This change is included in tomcat9 9.0.16-3~18.04.1 which is published to bionic-proposed. Changelog:

tomcat9 (9.0.16-3~18.04.1) bionic; urgency=medium

  * Don't set nologin shell in sysusers.d/tomcat9.conf
    It is the default anyway and systemd-sysusers in 18.04 can't parse it.
    (LP: #1823125)

Since this was a proposed-only issue, I am marking this resolved for bionic.