Public SourceMage Discussion List

["Sergey A. Lipnevich" <sergey AT sourcemage.org>]

David Kowis wrote:
> tracked and automatically removed. In my own twisted little mind, if 
> they're automatically added then they should be automatically removed 
> when they're no longer in use. For example: I install postgresql, the 
> user postgres is created, I didn't know that this user is created, but 
> nonetheless it's there. After dispelling postgresql, because I decided 
> that mysql is a better venue for the software I'm working on/with, the 
> postgres user remains on the system. What I'm proposing is that the 
> users get tracked somehow. If a spell needs the user it's added, upon 
> compile or resurrect. If the spell has that user and it is dispelled, 
> then the user should also vanish, unless, of course, it's being used 
> by another spell.
For development and debugging this might be a good idea (I'm not sure), 
but in production it's out of the question that existing account is 
automatically deleted. I believe that no production system would survive 
even an internal audit if such a functionality is in use. For an account 
to be deleted, one would have to ensure that, at the minimum, no files 
are owned by it, and no log ever mention it, and this is already too 
much to ask from a packaging system.

For your particular problem, maybe having a single "database" account is 
a better solution. Or, to use the same account for all services (we're 
talking development and debugging still). So, if account name is 
externalized from the spell so that an administrator such as yourself 
can set the account for it to use, this would be a good feature. For 
testing, you could have said "spells samba, postgresql, mysql, and bind 
all use account xyz" and then delete account xyz after testing is complete.

Sergey.