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  • From: Thomas Orgis <thomas-forum AT orgis.org>
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] user creation optional
  • Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 12:49:46 +0200

Am Sun, 23 Jul 2006 11:32:15 +0200
schrieb Arwed von Merkatz <v.merkatz AT gmx.net>:

> On Sun, Jul 23, 2006 at 02:20:52AM -0700, seth AT swoolley.homeip.net wrote:
> > user and group creation should be optional. If a user or group creation

I am convinced that there is improvement needed in various places of
user/group handling... and also kindof uttered the plan to put my thoughts
about this in code form; well, if I find the time...
My first point was having flexible uid/gid (or at least the user being able
to configure that, p.ex. to fit in certain networks (NIS,NFS) where some ids
are predefined).
Another one is making a chroot install more non-invasive to host system.
Creation of users/groups in host system to install stuff into the chroot is
just not a good thing.

> > Eventually, we could, with the stage_root help, even get the entire cast
> > process pulled into a non-root user except the install stage. making
> > the user and group creation optional would make it easier to cast as a
> > user later.

That would be a step. Wha I already thought about (for not touching the host
system user database) is adding the lines to $INSTALL_ROOT/etc/passwd and
change all chowns to use the id instead of the name - so that the users don't
have to be set up in the running system.
Maybe one could use installwatch to catch the chowns like it does with file
creation?

> >
> > I'm just saying there are a few good reasons to think about going this
> > direction.
> >
> > Any comments? If reaction is amenable, I'm going to file a bug assigned
> > to myself to start this process.
>
> I like the idea, though it might be hard to do for some spells. There
> are several programs that do chown/chgrp in their install process,
> failing if the user doesn't exist. We'd have to fix all those to work
> both with and without user/group existing.

Actually, if installwatch would catch the chowns, that would be no issue, as
far as simple chown usage is concerned.
But what broke staged installs already and will continue to be difficult is
setup work in install step that uses the installed software and users to do
some complex stuff (I think of mysql, or was it postgres, even?).

So, I am totally in favour of getting some movement going to make the account
handling better. I'd perhaps like to join that movement with own coding if
possible... but I still have some spells to do, not to forget RL;-)


Thomas.




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