[CentOS] Is this a bug in CentOS-7 BackupPC?

Sat Sep 26 19:28:30 UTC 2015
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>

On Sat, Sep 26, 2015 at 08:12:40PM +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> I don't really understand this.
> The perl script wants to create /var/run/BackupPC/BackupPC.sock
> which it seems it cannot do unless /var/run/BackupPC/ exists.
> If as you say this disappears on re-booting,
> I don't see how this program could work.

Seems like a packaging bug in EPEL.  Fedora does this (semi-)right, by
dropping down an /etc/tmpfiles.d/BackupPC.conf, which instantiates the
/var/run/BackupPC directory as 0755 root:backuppc.

Looking at the epel7 specfile, I see:

# tmpfiles.d & systemd support in all supported Fedora now, but not RHEL
%if 0%{?fedora}
%global _with_tmpfilesd 1
%global _with_systemd 1
%endif

and then later:

%if 0%{?_with_tmpfilesd}
install -d $RPM_BUILD_ROOT/%{_sysconfdir}/tmpfiles.d
install -p -m 0644 %{SOURCE6}
$RPM_BUILD_ROOT/%{_sysconfdir}/tmpfiles.d/%{name}.conf
%endif

and 

%if 0%{?_with_tmpfilesd}
%config(noreplace) %{_sysconfdir}/tmpfiles.d/%{name}.conf
%endif

Of course, CentOS7 (and RHEL7) supports tmpfiles.d, in fact, may
system services require it, such as cups, samba, pam, etc.  I'm not
sure why the BackupPC package installs it in /etc/tmpfiles.d instead
of /usr/lib/tmpfiles.d, probably because the person who made the
package isn't very systemd-saavy.

The contents of the /etc/tmpfiles.d/BackupPC.conf file looks like
this: 

D /var/run/BackupPC 0775 root backuppc -

If you create that file, you'll get the /var/run/BackupPC file when
you start up.  I suggest filing a bug against the EPEL package if you
want to get it fixed there.

-- 
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>