fix(recording): give RAP services a valid HOME so Bundler stops warni…

[antobinary]

Title: fix(recording): give RAP services a valid HOME so Bundler stops warning about /home/bigbluebutton

What

The three record-and-playback (RAP) systemd services now run with HOME=/var/lib/bigbluebutton (a real, package-owned directory) instead of inheriting the bigbluebutton user's non-existent /home/bigbluebutton. The bbb-record-core postinst creates and chowns that directory.

Closes bigbluebutton#16374.

Why

On startup, bbb-record --watch and the service journals show a red error:

Started BigBlueButton resque worker for recordings.
bundle[78394]: `/home/bigbluebutton` is not a directory.
bundle[78394]: Bundler will use `/tmp/bundler20230102-78394-ebyxph78394' as your home directory temporarily.
bundle[78394]: (in /usr/local/bigbluebutton/core)

It is cosmetic — recordings process fine — but it's noisy, reads like a failure, and has been reported repeatedly across 2.6 → 3.0 → 3.0.1.

Root cause

The bigbluebutton system user is created with home /home/bigbluebutton:

# build/packages-template/bbb-record-core/before-install.sh
addUser bigbluebutton "" bigbluebutton /home/bigbluebutton "bigbluebutton" "/bin/false"

but the addUser helper runs useradd -d <home> without --create-home, so the directory is never created on disk:

# build/deb-helper.sh
home_flags="-d $4"        # note: no --create-home
useradd $uid_flags --gid $group $home_flags --system --shell $shell ...

The RAP services run as this user and require 'bundler/setup', so Bundler resolves $HOME, finds /home/bigbluebutton missing, prints the warning, and falls back to a temp dir. (By contrast, the etherpad and freeswitch daemon users don't hit this — their homes /usr/share/etherpad-lite and /opt/freeswitch actually exist.)

All three RAP services are affected because each loads bundler/setup:

• bbb-rap-resque-worker.service — runs bundle exec rake … resque:workers
• bbb-rap-starter.service — rap-starter.rb
• bbb-rap-caption-inbox.service — rap-caption-inbox.rb

How

• Set Environment=HOME=/var/lib/bigbluebutton in the three RAP unit files:

# record-and-playback/core/systemd/bbb-rap-*.service  ([Service] section)
Environment=HOME=/var/lib/bigbluebutton

• Create + chown the directory in bbb-record-core's postinst, inside the existing if id $BBB_USER guard:

# build/packages-template/bbb-record-core/after-install.sh
mkdir -p /var/lib/bigbluebutton
chown $BBB_USER:$BBB_USER /var/lib/bigbluebutton

Decision — why this approach

In the issue, @ffdixon proposed redirecting HOME via a systemd override rather than creating /home/bigbluebutton:

[Service]
ExecStartPre=/bin/mkdir -p /tmp/bigbluebutton
Environment="HOME=/tmp/bigbluebutton"

This PR follows that same intent — redirect HOME, don't materialize a /home directory for a daemon account — but hardens it in two ways:

1. It ships in the package, so it survives upgrades. A hand-written systemd override is wiped on the next install — @Buda9 confirmed exactly this in the thread ("Fred's solution works until a new version is installed"). Baking HOME into the packaged units plus creating the dir in postinst means it's applied on every install/upgrade automatically.
2. It uses /var/lib/bigbluebutton instead of /tmp. /tmp is world-writable and can be cleaned out from under a long-running service; /var/lib/<pkg> is the FHS-standard location for a daemon's private state, is user-owned, and persists.

Alternatives considered

• Create /home/bigbluebutton — simplest one-liner, but a system/daemon account conventionally shouldn't own a /home directory (FHS expects /var/lib), and it opts into persistent writable state under /home. Rejected in favor of the maintainer's redirect approach.
• Add --create-home to the shared addUser helper — would only fix fresh installs (not already-created users on upgrade) and would change user creation for every other package. Too broad a blast radius for this bug.

Testing

• bash -n build/packages-template/bbb-record-core/after-install.sh passes.
• Change is shell/systemd only; units and postinst validated by inspection. On a live server after upgrade, the resque-worker journal no longer prints the /home/bigbluebutton warning and the RAP processes' HOME resolves to /var/lib/bigbluebutton.

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