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

Matthew Miller mattdm at mattdm.org
Thu Jul 7 00:52:59 UTC 2005


On Wed, Jul 06, 2005 at 05:40:20PM -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote:
> > I often upgrade by preserving /home and a few key config files but wiping
> > the system disk. Much faster than the anaconda upgrade option, with cleaner
> > results. But if I do that, and the UIDs used by packages at install time
> > change, there will be mis-owned files on the system.
> A system service should NOT have a home directory in /home so all of the
> UIG/GID in /home should be above 500.

That's irrelevant. If it creates files in (say) /var as whatever user it
picks at random, and then I copy my old password file over the new one, it
will be All Br0ke. (And that's not even considering the annoyance of dealing
with any *new* system users.)

[...]
> system accounts should not have home directories in /home anyway.

I have no idea why you're all on about /home.


> But really - just like you need to preserve your ssl keys, a sysadmin
> should preserve /etc/passwd and /etc/group. I never personally
> save /etc/shadow - I just use the saved /etc/passwd to recreate users
> keeping uid/gid the same.

See above. :)


-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>
Current office temperature: 79 degrees Fahrenheit.




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