On 30.07.2014 15:47, Corinna Vinschen wrote:
Hi folks,
here's a set of question to those of you interested in the new
passwd/group functionality. This already has been discussed partially,
but there was no conclusion.
Right now, there's a lot of variability in the user names, based on the
/etc/nsswitch.conf settings db_prefix and db_separator.
The separator char is a '+' by default but can be replaced with other
ASCII chars. db_prefix allows three styles of user naming conventions:
Default is 'auto':
builtin accounts; "+SYSTEM", "+LOCAL", etc.
primary domain "corinna", "cgf", ...
other domain: "DOMAIN1+walter", "DOMAIN2+mathilda"
If set to 'primary':
builtin accounts; "+SYSTEM", "+LOCAL", etc.
primary domain "MYDOMAIN+corinna", "MYDOMAIN+cgf", ...
other domain: "DOMAIN1+walter", "DOMAIN2+mathilda"
If set to 'always':
builtin accounts; "NT AUTHORITY+SYSTEM", "BULTIN+LOCAL", etc.
primary domain "MYDOMAIN+corinna", "MYDOMAIN+cgf", ...
other domain: "DOMAIN1+walter", "DOMAIN2+mathilda"
"Primary domain" here is either the primary domain of the machine or the
local SAM if the machine is no domain member. "Other domain" here is
either a trusted domain or the local SAM for domain machines.
Together with the variable separator char this is an awful lot of
variability, which has the potential side effect to complicate the
code *and* debugging.
Also, the leading '+' for builtin accounts results in some downsides,
one of them for instance the fact that `chown +x' assumes that x is a
numerical uid or gid. Thus `chown +SYSTEM ...' fails. On the other
hand it simplifies the account handling inside of Cygwin.
So I'd like to ask a few questions to which I'd like to have some brief
answers, kind of like a poll, to get a better idea how we should
proceed:
1. Shall we remove the leading '+' from the builtin account names
or shall we keep it?
2. Shall we stick to '+' as the separator char or choose another one?
If so, which one?
3. Shall we keep the `db_prefix' variability or choose one of
the prefixing methods and stick to it? If so, which one, auto,
primary, or always?
Bonus question:
4. Should Cygwin downcase all usernames when generating the Cygwin
username, so, if your Windows username is 'Ralph', your Cygwin
username will be 'ralph'?
Thanks,
Corinna
Just a thought:
Is there anything preventing you from using the pathname conventions for
user names?
I seem to remember having seen constructs like "domain/user" (or ./user
for the local domain) e.g. in Samba and found this to be quite
intuitive, up to and including the ability to drop a leading "./" for
local names.
It is also pretty close to how Windows specifies domain users names (but
use the unixy '/' instead of the windozy '\' (or must I write '\\' ;-))
and positively avoids the chown gotcha.
Also some code could be reused for user name handling from path
canonicalization?
Again - I'm not deep into this topic, so please feel free to ignore the
suggestion if it doesn't make sense to you.
Cheers,
Wolf
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