Starting user UIDs at 1000 - please check your packages

[Simo Sorce]

On Wed, 2011-07-20 at 13:52 -0400, Ric Wheeler wrote:
> On 07/20/2011 01:19 PM, Simo Sorce wrote:
> > On Wed, 2011-07-20 at 12:29 -0400, Ric Wheeler wrote:
> >> On 07/20/2011 12:28 PM, Miloslav Trmač wrote:
> >>> On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 6:24 PM, Ric Wheeler<rwheeler at redhat.com>   wrote:
> >>>> I normally build systems with (at least!) a separate /boot, / and /home.
> >>>> This lets me do a full install, blow away old fedora system partitions and
> >>>> not lose any user data.
> >>>>
> >>>> Since that puts down a pristine F16 image, does that mean we need to chown
> >>>> all of the user files that survive in a separate partition?
> >>> Either chown the files, or create a kickstart file that puts
> >>> /etc/login.defs in place in a %pre script.  chown is probably much
> >>> simpler unless you have many systems to manage.
> >>>      Mirek
> >> Makes sense...
> >>
> >> We should also note that this might be a common need for users who have SAN
> >> attached storage (and that could be large, multi-user systems).
> > If they don't already have a directory or at the very least a way to
> > rsync /etc/passwd around they do not have a production grade
> > installation.
> >
> > If they already have shared user information this change shouldn't make
> > much of a difference to them unless they want to change existing user
> > Ids.
> >
> > Simo.
> >
> 
> With SAN attached storage (or just the clean install example I gave earlier in 
> the thread), the install will have existing user ID's but their /etc/password 
> (and so on) will get nuked during the install which could/will re-use existing 
> user ID's.
> 
> rsync won't help since their data is all local already. You will need to "chown" 
> the user files to the higher range PID's.

If you nuke /etc/passwd you always need to do that anyway.
If you rely on useradd() to create users with the same ids as before
that's really poor admin practice.

Simo.

-- 
Simo Sorce * Red Hat, Inc * New York