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

[Chris Gianelloni]

...or you could simply replace the default eid.passwd file with one in
your /etc/portage directory to reflect your company's "proper" UID/GID
usage.  It makes much more sense to have portage conform to your system
in this way than to take the time/energy to create yet another almost
unused feature.  I don't mean to say this to insult at all.  I just
think the better method for anything of this type is to have a default
that portage uses, which works for the masses, but can be overridden by
files in /etc/portage (such as package.mask, package.unmask).  It makes
for a cleaner approach IMHO.

On Thu, 2004-01-29 at 12:55, splite-gentoo@××××××××××××××××.edu wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 08:18:11AM -0800, Max Kalika wrote:
> > 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
>
> "I can't eat eggs because I'm allergic."
>
> "All the more reason to eat eggs!"
>
> > 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.
>
> Only in the case where all your machines are Gentoo boxes.  The uid you
> just plucked out of eid.passwd may already be used by another OS for an
> entirely different purpose.  Now your sshd is running with httpd's uid,
> or worse, as a non-system user because, say, Solaris only considers uids
> under 250 to be system accounts.
>
> We have user and system account entries that predate Linus' first kernel.
> We're certainly not going to chown all their files on hundreds of machines
> (plus the backup tapes) just to conform to what Gentoo's idea of system
> accounts should be.  I don't think anyone else deploying Gentoo into an
> existing Unix environment would warm to the idea either.
>
> > 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.
>
> It's not really a huge undertaking to provide a switch that lets folks do
> their account management themselves if they need to.  I'm not asking that
> ebuilds should automagically know how to update my NIS maps or talk to your
> MySQL server.
>
> --
> gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list
-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Games Team

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