[Fedora-packaging] packages which add user accounts: is fedora-usermgmt the way?

Enrico Scholz enrico.scholz at informatik.tu-chemnitz.de
Sun Jul 3 10:08:32 UTC 2005


mattdm at mattdm.org (Matthew Miller) writes:

>> That's not possible. Only the range 0-99 is reserved for fixed user
>> ids. All other ranges are free for local uses. For example the range
>> 100-499 mentioned in another posting: every third party package which
>> adds user, or just a simple 'useradd -r' will assign the next unused
>> uid in this area. So you can not assign fixed UIDs in this range as it
>> *will* cause conflicts.
>> 
>> Using another UID range will be similarly; it may be/is possible that
>> this range is used on some system.
>
> Yes, but the range under 500 is already defined as "special". I don't think
> it's unreasonable for a certain subset of that to be now marked as reserved
> for Fedora Extras packages. We could make it start at 300 to be less likely
> to conflict with random "useradd -r" done earlier.

Assigning fixed IDs in this range would violate LSB which states

| The system User IDs from 100 to 499 should be reserved for dynamic
| allocation by system administrators and post install scripts using
| useradd.
  [http://www.linuxbase.org/spec//book/LSB-generic/LSB-generic/uidrange.html]

That's why it would be a bad idea when Fedora Extras claims fixed UIDs
there. I agree with you that every large organisation has its assigned
UID ranges and it will not be possible to find a free range which can be
assigned to Fedora Extras.

Perhaps we could find such a range in the 32bit UID space which is allowed
by Linux; but I am not sure whether we cause portability problems.



Enrico
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