On Thu, Jan 29, 2004 at 10:03:48AM +0100, Paul de Vrieze wrote: > Basically I think we need a way to just say "ensureUser heartbeat" or > "ensureGroup heartbeat" which will add a user/group with that name if > not available through nsswitch. It should probably call an > adduser/addgroup script to add the user/group. enewuser and enewgroup already have this functionality (they only add it if it doesn't already exist).
> Ebuilds should not depend on specific numbers. If there are ebuilds > that want the existence of the user to exist at compilation time we > might need to have a way to do it before compiling (and before > installation too). Applications that want to know the numeric uid/gid > should be patched to retrieve it based on a username / groupname > instead. I'm sorry, but that is wrong, for several reasons. While it is definetly true that packages shouldn't have hardcoded numeric uid/gid in the package, actually really do want specific numeric uid/gid in the ebuilds, or somewhere within the control of the distribution. The simplest of cases for this is GRP. For example: Take qmail as a package, and say it's users weren't already in baselayout (where they are presently), but rather assigned the next available values when pkg_preinst is done. Tar stores uid/gids numerically as opposed to names, so there is no gaurentee that install accross two systems at different stages will produce a installed package that works. Doing lots of chown calls after the package is merged, while possible, is more of a pain in the posterior than anything else. Another problem case is applications that resolve usernames/groupnames into numeric values at compile time, they also won't take kindly to being moved over systems as compiled packages, when the uid/gid values vary. One final case, more for convenience in data recovery than anything else. Say you loose your /etc/passwd and /etc/group due to some reason (filesystem corruption, user error, etc.), but /usr and /var are still intact, distribution constant uid/gid values make recovery a _lot_ easier. -- Robin Hugh Johnson E-Mail : [EMAIL PROTECTED] Home Page : http://www.orbis-terrarum.net/?l=people.robbat2 ICQ# : 30269588 or 41961639 GnuPG FP : 11AC BA4F 4778 E3F6 E4ED F38E B27B 944E 3488 4E85
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