https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/368850/ansible-role-why-do-i-have-to-set-user-email-in-etckeeper/368851

etckeeper expects that users set git user.email. But it does not document this, or suggest a best way to do it.

In common usage, this expectation is masked. I believe the conditions for it breaking are:

  1. user.email is not set in git, AND
  2. the system hostname cannot be resolved to an FQDN, AND
  3. /etc/mailname does not exist (it is created by the Debian exim packages?) AND
  4. etckeeper is not run from sudo AND
  5. etckeeper is not run from a tty

In this situation, etckeeper requires users to set user.email in /root/.gitconfig, or to have set it in /etc/.git/config immediately after etckeeper init.

This is not Ansible-specific: the last two conditions will also arise in the daily autocommit script.

● etckeeper.service - Autocommit of changes in /etc directory
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/etckeeper.service; static; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Sat 2017-06-03 00:22:20 BST; 5s ago
     Docs: man:etckeeper(8)
  Process: 2989 ExecStart=/etc/etckeeper/daily (code=exited, status=128)
 Main PID: 2989 (code=exited, status=128)

Jun 03 00:22:20 unstable daily[2989]: Run
Jun 03 00:22:20 unstable daily[2989]:   git config --global user.email "you@example.com"
Jun 03 00:22:20 unstable daily[2989]:   git config --global user.name "Your Name"
Jun 03 00:22:20 unstable daily[2989]: to set your account's default identity.
Jun 03 00:22:20 unstable daily[2989]: Omit --global to set the identity only in this repository.
Jun 03 00:22:20 unstable daily[2989]: fatal: unable to auto-detect email address (got 'root@unstable.(none)')
Jun 03 00:22:20 unstable systemd[1]: etckeeper.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=128/n/a
Jun 03 00:22:20 unstable systemd[1]: Failed to start Autocommit of changes in /etc directory.
Jun 03 00:22:20 unstable systemd[1]: etckeeper.service: Unit entered failed state.
Jun 03 00:22:20 unstable systemd[1]: etckeeper.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

IMO, considering how to document this behaviour shows it to be user-unfriendly. Therefore, it would be simplest if etckeeper could fall back to using $(id -un), once $(tty) fails.

Set USER=$(whoami), for git only. done --?Joey