Re: [gentoo-dev] EID database and entries getting to baselayout

[Max Kalika]

Quoting splite-gentoo@××××××××××××××××.edu:

> In our case, our account database is shared among Solaris, IRIX, Mac OS X,
> BSD, and Linux boxes, so I can't have ebuilds using static ID numbers, as
> there's a good chance they're already in use.

This is all the more reason to have static UIDs/GIDs.  I have all user
accounts in mysql with UIDs and GIDs starting at 2000, however if I go
install something that requires a system account which is not in
baselayout's passwd or group file, this new account gets the the next
available UID (i.e. proftpd is now running as 2203).  Not cool.  However,
if it is explicit that all UIDs below, say, 500 are to be reserved for the
system, and enewuser looks up the UID in PORTDIR/profiles/eid.passwd, the
whole process of creating users is controlled and predictable.  We can
probably go as far as mucking repoman to check that enew{user,group} calls
are referencing "known" users and groups, and prevent commits which fail
this restriction. (Just a thought).

There are difficulties with other OSes, of course (Daniel referred to
MacOSX in the bug that deals with this issue.) I don't know if it would be
easier to try to solve all these problems ahead of time or come up with a
solution for the "wider audience" now and try to convert later.

-- 
max kalika
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