CI: stop dpkg starting redis-server (Windows/WSL install hang on 8.10) - #3145
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We hand-start every server instance the tests need, so drop a policy-rc.d that tells invoke-rc.d/deb-systemd-invoke not to start services at all. The packaged redis-server unit would otherwise race our own primary for 127.0.0.1:6379 on any run where WSL came up with systemd. That also sidesteps an install hang we saw with the 8.10.0 package: its redis.conf lost "supervised auto", so redis never sd_notify()s, the Type=notify unit never leaves "activating", and the postinst's "systemctl start" blocks (indefinitely, since redis then can't save its RDB on SIGTERM and the unit disables the stop timeout). That is an upstream packaging slip which they are already fixing, so this isn't a permanent change in behaviour from 8.10 - but not starting the service is the right thing for this job regardless. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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The Windows job's "Install Redis" step began stalling indefinitely once server 8.10.0 hit packages.redis.io. Reproduced locally in a systemd-running jammy container: 8.8.1 installs in ~4s, 8.10.0 never returns.
The 8.10.0 redis-server deb ships the upstream redis.conf rather than the Debian-patched one (control scripts and the systemd unit are unchanged, so this doesn't show up in a package diff). It drops "supervised auto" and changes "dir /var/lib/redis" to "dir ./", which deadlocks the postinst: redis never sd_notify()s, so the Type=notify unit never leaves "activating" and "systemctl start" blocks; at TimeoutStartSec systemd SIGTERMs it, the final RDB save fails against the unit's read-only root so redis refuses to exit; and the unit's TimeoutStopSec=0 means systemd never SIGKILLs it.
We hand-start every server instance we need, so drop a policy-rc.d that tells invoke-rc.d/deb-systemd-invoke not to start services at all. This also stops the packaged unit racing us for 127.0.0.1:6379, which it would win or lose non-deterministically on runs where WSL came up with systemd.
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