Fedora User Management (revisited)

[Tom Lane]

Simo Sorce <ssorce at redhat.com> writes:
> On Fri, 2007-03-09 at 22:12 -0500, Matthew Miller wrote:
>> On Fri, Mar 09, 2007 at 10:08:02PM -0500, Simo Sorce wrote:
>>> Why do we need fixed uids at all? is it so difficult to use
>>> getpwnam() ??
>> 
>> Because the name isn't stored on the filesystem; just the number.

> It does not matter unless the application must be able to run
> with /etc/passwd being absent.

Yes, it does matter, because if you uninstall and reinstall the package
then any files that might have been owned by that UID should still be
owned by that UID.  I run into this quite often with the database
packages for instance.

(Oh, you didn't want your mysql update to wipe out your database?)

			regards, tom lane