Comment 5 for bug 1821412

Hi Bryan,

I advise against SRUing the current patch to focal, based on the following:
1) I have not been able to reproduce the original problem on focal - but could
see it on disco
2) The changelog for the fix states
  - Wrap pkexec call in /bin/sh to workaround requirement
    that PPID not be 1. (LP: #1821412)
  - Don't use G_SPAWN_DO_NOT_REAP_CHILD in order to avoid
    zombie processes.
3) PPID == 1 is a valid concern, given this code from polkit-1 pkexec.c: /* Figure out the parent process */ pid_of_caller = getppid (); if (pid_of_caller == 1)
    {
      /* getppid() can return 1 if the parent died (meaning that we are reaped
       * by /sbin/init); In that case we simpy bail.
       */
      g_printerr ("Refusing to render service to dead parents.\n");
      goto out;
    }
4) Without the patch, ppid is the systemd pid (not 1)
5) With the patch, ppid is still systemd (and still not 1), which suggests that
the change doesn't make the situation any better - and extracting the
before/after usage of g_spawn_async into a test program provides equivalent
results.

Let's discuss further if you have any concerns.