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

[Matthew Miller]

On Sat, Jul 02, 2005 at 10:01:26AM +0200, Enrico Scholz wrote:
> 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.

(Does useradd -r still use the wacky logic of picking the next-highest UID
instead of the lowest available? That should be fixed if so -- I have a
patch to change the general behavior but haven't checked if useradd -r
follows its own logic.)



> That's why, fedora-usermgmt was written. It creates an UID relative to a
> configurable base (the value in /etc/fedora/usermgmt/base[gu]id). How
> you fill an entry into this file is your thing... I use cfengine for it
> and it works well.

We can't have a *default* that breaks in large environments. I guess I'm not
terribly opposed to continuing to use the abstraction tools so someone can
pick another range if they've already got many non-standard system accounts.

-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>
Current office temperature: 77 degrees Fahrenheit.