Hi,
Some of the ids that I see in /usr/share/base-passwd/passwd.master
are :
games:*:5:100:games:/usr/games:/bin/sh
news:*:9:9:news:/var/spool/news:/bin/sh
postgres:*:31:32:postgres:/var/lib/postgres:/bin/sh
list:*:38:38:SmartList:/var/list:/bin/sh
irc:*:39:39:ircd:/var:/bin/sh
gnats:*:41:41:Gnats Bug-Reporting System (admin):/var/lib/gnats:/bin/sh
It appears to me that the packages which need these ids are
optional packages. Why would it be necessary to have a "games" id on a
system which will never have games installed? Or the "irc" id on a system
which will never run any irc client on server? The sane thing to do would
be to let packages which need these reserved ids create these ids when
they are installed and remove them when they are purged. That way, no
unnecessary ids are created on systems. I have seen indications that this
is contrary to debian-policy - hence my request for revision.
I work at an organization where the security policies forbid the
existence of non-essential ids. I could of course manually delete these
ids, but (1) I am afraid that maybe apt-get upgrade might introduce
problems on such a fixed system (2) I may one day install a new package
which makes the assumption that one of these ids are existing, and then
end up with a broken package / system.
I would like to request a similar revision for groups in
/usr/share/base-passwd/group.master too.
Thanks,
Jor-el
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