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Re: standardize uid:gid?

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On Thu 18 Jan 2024 at 07:31:05 (-0500), Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 18, 2024 at 05:38:37AM -0000, David Chmelik wrote:
> > Couldn't Debian standardize uid:gid numbers for daemons?
> 
> The thing is, Debian has tens of thousands of packages, and any one
> of these packages is capable of creating new UIDs and/or GIDs if it
> feels like doing so.  There is no centralized place where all of the
> possible UIDs and GIDs are registered.  It's all ad hoc.
> 
> If a centralized UID/GID registry were to be created, the following
> results would occur:

Debian does have four very small ID registries, two are in
base-passwd: /usr/share/base-passwd/{passwd,group}.master.¹
At a purely local level, what would be the consequences of
extending those files to cover all the expected UID/GIDs on
a network of pet PCs (as opposed to cattle). Obviously this
would have to be done at the earliest opportunity.

>  * Every package that creates one would have to be updated in a
>    non-trivial manner.  By its maintainer.  Thousands of separate
>    maintainers.  A cat-herd of Debian developers, who do this work
>    in their spare time, as they get around to it.

A local sysadmin might try wrapping adduser/useradd, or whatever,
to insert/override choices. Or else new packages would have to be
examined before their installation, and UID/GIDs added manually.

>  * Every obscure, niche package's users and groups would have to be
>    added to every Debian system. [ … ]
>  * Did I mention that every Debian system in existence would have to
>    have ALL of its users and groups redone? [ … ]
>  * This change would have to be made by a human being running a
>    conversion script as root in single-user mode, [ … ]
> 
> This is one of those "the boat has already left the dock" situations.
> If this were going to happen, it would have to have happened in the
> early 1990s.  There is no feasible way to make it happen now.

Agreed, for any sort of Debian or non-local reconfiguration.

¹ There are some reserved high IDs documented in the README, which
  are set when the relevant packages are installed.

Cheers,
David.

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Thread

standardize uid:gid? David Chmelik <dchmelik@gmail.com> - 2024-01-18 06:50 +0100
  Re: standardize uid:gid? Tim Woodall <debianuser@woodall.me.uk> - 2024-01-18 07:30 +0100
    Re: standardize uid:gid? Andy Smith <andy@strugglers.net> - 2024-01-18 15:30 +0100
    Re: standardize uid:gid? Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2024-01-18 16:10 +0100
    Re: standardize uid:gid? Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2024-01-18 16:20 +0100
      Re: standardize uid:gid? Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2024-01-18 18:10 +0100
      Re: standardize uid:gid? Nicholas Geovanis <nickgeovanis@gmail.com> - 2024-01-18 22:00 +0100
  Re: standardize uid:gid? Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-01-18 13:40 +0100
    Re: standardize uid:gid? David Chmelik <dchmelik@gmail.com> - 2024-01-19 07:00 +0100
    Re: standardize uid:gid? David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2024-01-20 00:00 +0100
    Re: standardize uid:gid? Michael Stone <mstone@debian.org> - 2024-01-26 15:30 +0100
      Re: standardize uid:gid? Michael Kjörling <2695bd53d63c@ewoof.net> - 2024-01-26 16:30 +0100

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