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

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Sep  7, 2005, Ralf Corsepius <rc040203 at freenet.de> wrote:

> The only reason for not wanting to remove accounts on package removal to
> me is "accounts leaving stray files somewhere".

> However, rpms should have always have control over all files it owns.

Unfortunately rpms can't hunt for backup tapes containing and wipe
content out of them just to keep them consistent.  When you restore
data from a backup tape, wouldn't it be nice to still have the user
that owned that data?

That's why it's policy on several locations to never ever reuse uids.
If you need a new account, get the next available uid.  If you need to
close an account, change its password and shell to something unusable,
and that's it.  Leave the user information alone.

-- 
Alexandre Oliva         http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat Compiler Engineer   aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist  oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}