[Fedora-packaging] packages which add user accounts: is fedora-usermgmt the way?

[Enrico Scholz]

thias at spam.spam.spam.spam.spam.spam.spam.egg.and.spam.freshrpms.net (Matthias Saou) writes:

>> > > Someone recently pointed out to me the existence of useradd -r and
>> > > groupadd -r (they're Red Hat added functionality). When used, these
>> > > commands create the first available UID and GID below UID_MAX and
>> > > GID_MAX, as defined in /etc/login.defs.
> ...
> I tend to agree, and personally dislike the added complexity of this
> fedora-usermgmt

Which added complexity? Usage of fedora-usermgmt is very simple:

1. Register a user/uid pair at
   http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageUserRegistry

2. Add a 'Requires(pre): fedora-usermgmt' (which replaces the shadowutils
   counterpart). Complains about this additional dependency are bogus in
   the age of smartpm or yum.

3. Call 'fedora-useradd' with an additional parameter (the uid)


Additional configuration is very simple also; when you want semi-static
uids:

1. just activate the mode with

   |  /usr/sbin/update-alternatives --set fedora-usermgmt /etc/fedora/usermgmt/scripts.shadow-utils

2. configure your prefered baseuids/gids in /etc/fedora/usermgmt/base[gu]id
   (which are simple textfiles). This setup can be done easily e.g. with
   custom configuration-package or cfengine.



> that got imported from the fedora.us days. But I also think that in
> some cases, fixed uid/gids are best, most importantly when chances of
> having files shared across machines are high,

My experiences show that this applies to most packages.



Enrico
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