[Bug 1599981] Re: aptdaemon debconf-communicate should be running as root

[Steve Langasek]

There should not be any additional password prompting as part of
spawning debconf-communicate as root.  This should be encompassed by the
existing security policy for running apt itself.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1599981

Title:
  aptdaemon debconf-communicate should be running as root

Status in aptdaemon package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  aptdaemon runs as the session user. It needs to spawn debconf-
  communicate to interact with the user when packages have debconf
  questions; which often needs to be done as root (or otherwise have
  sufficient privileges) since packages may want to prompt for
  passwords, which use a different, more secure debconf database than
  the main config one.

  aptdaemon probably should be spawning debconf-communicate as root, at
  the cost of prompting the user for a password when debconf access is
  necessary.

  This became readily apparent with
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/shim-signed/+bug/1599051;
  updating to a new shim which requires inputting a Secure Boot password
  to disable shim validation would consistently fail due to being unable
  to access password.dat (you would see errors on the command line when
  update-manager is started in a terminal)

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