Charles-Francois Natali <neolo...@free.fr> added the comment: I'm not sure whether POSIX warrants anything about this behavior, but nothing prevents a process from running with a UID not listed in /etc/passwd (or NIS, whatever). For example, sudo allows running a command with a UID not listed in the password database, see http://linux.die.net/man/5/sudoers : """ targetpw
If set, sudo will prompt for the password of the user specified by the -u flag (defaults to root) instead of the password of the invoking user. Note that this precludes the use of a uid not listed in the passwd database as an argument to the -u flag. This flag is off by default. """ UIDs not backed by users are useful for example if you're working with a sandbox, or virtual users such as in some FTP servers http://www.proftpd.org/docs/howto/VirtualUsers.html : """ Question: What makes a user "virtual", then? Answer: A virtual user is, quite simply, a user that is not defined in the system /etc/passwd file. This file associates a user name, given by the system administrator, to a user ID (commonly shortened to UID) and a group ID (GID), among other details. The Unix kernel does not deal with users in terms of their user names; it only "knows" about UIDs and GIDs. This means that an application like proftpd can look up the IDs to use for a given user name however it sees fit. Using /etc/passwd is not strictly required. """ ---------- nosy: +neologix _______________________________________ Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue10496> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com
