Ludovic Courtès <l...@gnu.org> writes:
> Mark H Weaver <m...@netris.org> skribis:
>
>> Here's one idea: when activating a system, *never* delete users or
>> groups if files still exist that are owned by those users/groups.
>> Checking all filesystems would likely be too expensive, but perhaps it
>> would be sufficient to check certain directories such as /var, /etc, and
>> possibly the top directory of /home.
>
> How would you determine which directories to look at though? What if we
> miss an important one?
I have another idea:
Maintain historical mappings from user/group names to UIDs/GIDs, perhaps
in some file in /etc, where entries are added but *never* automatically
removed. When allocating UIDs/GIDs, we would avoid any UIDs/GIDs in the
range of those mappings.
Then, provide a UID/GID garbage collector, to be explicitly run by users
if desired, which would scan all filesystems to find the set of UID/GIDs
currently referenced, and remove entries from the historical mappings
that are no longer needed.
What do you think?
Mark
