]] Christian Seiler > On 10/24/2016 12:42 AM, Colin Watson wrote: > > On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 02:57:23PM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote: > >> I am packaging Keysafe,[1] and the binary package keysafe-server needs > >> to create a new system user with a dynamically allocated UID. > >> > >> I am using the username 'keysafe'. I do not anticipate any collision > >> with any other package, but policy says I should e-mail you to confirm > >> that. > > > > Policy should probably only suggest emailing the base-passwd maintainer > > in the case where you need a statically-allocated ID > > The requirement to have this for dynamically allocated IDs also > probably stems from the fact that the users created in postinst scripts > should not conflict. But wouldn't it be far easier to just create a > page on the Debian Wiki and track that there? [1] And have policy say > to check that list to see that it's unique and add your package + user > there when you are about to upload a new package? That way, in 99.9% of > cases where users are required, and they don't conflict with existing > ones, there's no additional work for people other than the package > maintainer, and the package maintainer doesn't have to wait for a > response before they are able to proceed. And if there really is a > conflict, people can still post to -devel about it.
I'd prefer if user creation was just done declaratively and then we could scan the archive. If we have a manually-maintained list, it will get out of sync with reality pretty quickly. -- Tollef Fog Heen UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are
