[OE-core] why does useradd.bbclass loop retrying its commands?

[Mark Hatle]

On 11/14/14, 11:37 PM, Peter A. Bigot wrote:
> The useradd, groupadd, and groupmems commands in useradd.bbclass are
> executed in a loop with up to 10 failed attempts before they give up.
> This appears to have always been the case, as long as that file has been
> present.

If multiple recipes/packages have the user, group, or shadow databases open -- 
the system will block until they are done maniuplating the file.

> Is there any reason why an initial failed attempt to execute one of
> these commands would be expected to succeed on retry, other than because
> delaying failure gives a chance for concurrently executing task to
> complete and so satisfy a dependency?

Depending on system, cores, etc.. we've seen easily it take up to 5-7 tries 
before the files unlock and are available for processing.

--Mark

> (This isn't the root cause of the pseudo autobuilder failure under
> multilib, but it did look plausible for a while.)
>
> Peter
>