| 1 |
Hello, |
| 2 |
|
| 3 |
I would like to put an emphasis on the fact that many eclasses |
| 4 |
and ebuilds in gx86 are relying on an assumption that the superuser |
| 5 |
account is always supposed to be named 'root'. |
| 6 |
|
| 7 |
In fact, no such constraint exists. Although most users will never even |
| 8 |
think of changing the superuser account name, it is perfectly legit |
| 9 |
to do so, and to use any name for that account. Moreover, it is |
| 10 |
perfectly legit to name an unprivileged user 'root' too. |
| 11 |
|
| 12 |
Thus, the above assumption is clearly incorrect and may result in many |
| 13 |
issues with ebuilds using it. These range from builds failing because |
| 14 |
of chown 'invalid user' error to packages being installed with |
| 15 |
incorrect file ownership. |
| 16 |
|
| 17 |
From what I've heard already, similar problem has hit Gentoo/*BSD users |
| 18 |
already, with superuser group not being named 'root'. Although some |
| 19 |
files were fixed to properly use numeric GID in the specific case, |
| 20 |
no UID-related changes were done. |
| 21 |
|
| 22 |
Moreover, not all developers agree with the case being an issue, |
| 23 |
and they even refuse patches clearly fixing it [1]. Thus, I guess that |
| 24 |
a clear policy regarding referencing the superuser account should be |
| 25 |
enforced. |
| 26 |
|
| 27 |
In my opinion, that policy should clearly indicate that the numeric |
| 28 |
UID/GID should be always used for referencing the superuser account |
| 29 |
as they are fixed unlike the names. |
| 30 |
|
| 31 |
[1] http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=315779 |
| 32 |
|
| 33 |
-- |
| 34 |
Best regards, |
| 35 |
Michał Górny |
| 36 |
|
| 37 |
<http://mgorny.alt.pl> |
| 38 |
<xmpp:mgorny@××××××.ru> |
Archives