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https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/20/systemd_2561_data_wipe_fix/
Following closely after the release of version 256, version 256.1 fixes a handful of bugs. One of these is emphatically not systemd-tmpfiles recursively deleting your entire home directory. That's a feature.
The 256.1 release is now out, containing some 38 minor changes and bugfixes. Among these are some changes to the help text around the systemd-tmpfiles command, which describes itself as a tool to "Create, delete, and clean up files and directories." Red Hat's RHEL documentation describes it as a tool for managing and cleaning up your temporary files.
That sounds innocuous enough, right?
It isn't, as Github user jedenastka discovered on Friday. He filed bug #33349 and the description makes for harrowing reading, not just because of the tool's entirely intended behavior, but also because of the systemd maintainers' response, which could be summarized as "you're doing it wrong".
(Score: 5, Interesting) by tekk on Sunday June 23 2024, @03:56AM
No backflips needed:
systemd included a tool which allows users to purge all tmpfiles.
The developer of this feature considers the user an idiot for not checking that /home was in a config file explicitly intended (per the documentation) for "volatile and temporary files and directories." (see the ticket.)
Additionally this is 0% Debian's fault. The maintainer of systemd-tmpfiles saying in an LWN comment that this is the *UPSTREAM* default: https://lwn.net/Articles/978622/ [lwn.net]
Even if the config file it's ridiculous to have this behavior: when the config entry is explicitly "Never clean this up" it should be left alone.