On 20/05/2010 20:43, Steve Langasek wrote:
On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 08:31:36PM +0100, Roger Leigh wrote:
Do we have any actual users of this space? I didn't see anything in
Policy. Is there a central database listing the assignments? If
so, where may it be found?
/usr/share/doc/base-passwd/README
Thanks. Looking at the list, there's only 10 packages in total. 9
create just one user/group, and one (qmail, which AFIACT isn't even in
Debian) creates six. I'm unsure why these 9 packages need a static
allocation, given that every other service just creates/removes them
dynamically. Given the miniscule usage of this reserved range, is
static allocation justifiable?
The main justification I would have for this change is that keeping
the old 16-bit-constrained assignments fragments the 32-bit range
space unnecessarily. For checks such as being discussed, having a
contiguous user range makes things much simpler for both us and
admins. I accept that we can't change things for existing systems
where these are already being used, but it sucks to be stuck with a
16-bit legacy for evermore even for new installs.
I don't think it's practical to ever get rid of the legacy UID range
fragmentation in the 16-bit space. Better would be to plan a transition to
where we start numbering new user accounts from 65536 by default, instead of
from 1000.
Something probably best left until after Squeeze! I think the simple
check we have now will be robust enough until after then.
Regards,
Roger
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