bug#37162: ‘guix pack -f docker’ creates an image without /etc/passwd

[Ricardo Wurmus <rekado@elephly.net>]

Ludovic Courtès <ludovic.courtes@inria.fr> writes:

>> What use case(s) exactly depend on the presence of the
>> /etc/{passwd,group,shadow} files?
>
> Generally, absent these files, getpw(3) and co. won’t give useful
> results, and some applications will behave poorly (e.g., the PS1 prompt
> in Bash can’t show the user name; ‘id’ fails).
>
> Most of the time it’s just a minor inconvenience.

I think it’s fine to add these files to avoid this source of
inconvenience.

Perhaps it would be good to recommend in the manual the use of “guix
system” for those who need more control over the contents of these
files.

And maybe we can make some really simple template system configuration
available to “guix system” without requiring users to fully specify the
operating system configuration.  I’m thinking of something like this
where %simple-os is made available by default:

(operating-system
  (inherit %simple-os)
  (packages (list "a" "b" "c")))

--
Ricardo