Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Jaco Kroon <jaco@××××××.za>
To: gentoo-dev@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] [PATCH v3] glep-0081: User and group management via dedicated packages
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2019 08:32:00
Message-Id: 34e675a7-5e4b-44ff-ad4f-3b7a8c862ed1@uls.co.za
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-dev] [PATCH v3] glep-0081: User and group management via dedicated packages by Andrew Savchenko
1 Hi,
2
3 On 2019/06/21 07:59, Andrew Savchenko wrote:
4 > On Thu, 20 Jun 2019 16:32:56 +0200 Michał Górny wrote:
5 >> On Thu, 2019-06-20 at 09:53 -0400, Brian Evans wrote:
6 >>> On 6/9/2019 7:39 AM, Michał Górny wrote:
7 >>>> +Tracking of user/group usage is done through dependencies. As long
8 >>>> +as any installed package depends on a specific user/group package,
9 >>>> +the respective user/group is assumed to be used. If no package
10 >>>> +requiring the specific user/group is left, the package manager
11 >>>> +automatically prunes the package clearly indicating it is no longer
12 >>>> +used.
13 >>> You cannot know when a name is "no longer used". An administrator could
14 >>> have adopted a username for other purposes.
15 >> That's why we don't remove the actual user/group. However, this is
16 >> a valuable information to the administrator that no package is using
17 >> the user/group in question.
18 > So how do you propose to clean them up? Or let user systems trash
19 > with unused uids/gids? The GLEP 81 only mensions some possible
20 > tooling for cleanup. Is there an implementation available? I don't
21 > see it within proposed patch sets.
22 >
23 > This GLEP should not be accepted unless all necessary tools are
24 > available including a cleanup tool.
25
26 find / -{user,group} ???
27
28 For files having ownership at least.
29
30 There may well be other reasons why the user is still in use (that I
31 can't think of right now), but unfortunately this is what makes this so
32 difficult.  I'd propose that some tool be used that provides hooks to
33 allow additional checks to be added.
34
35 Kind Regards,
36 Jaco