The fix to this bug is arguably incorrect. The UID_MIN value in login.defs is only for specifying the start of the range of dynamically- allocated UIDs assigned by useradd or newusers. It does not account for user accounts added to the system via other means, such as pre-existing accounts with long-established UIDs in large-scale environments.
For example, we have tens of thousands of users with UIDs that range from double-digits (that are approximately three decades old and still in use) up through the mid-14000s. We move the UID_MIN range up into the 58000s to prevent adduser (used only for creating machine-local user accounts that do not exist in the central account system) from creating accounts that conflict with UIDs of already existing accounts. This is the correct solution for moving the dynamicaly-allocated UID range out of the way of statically-allocated external UIDs. However, the patch above causes gdm to only present login options for this dynamic UID range, and suppresses any account with a statically- assigned UID. Now, the problem can be worked around because the patch uses the *first* value of UID_MIN that it finds in login.defs, while utilities that are actually supposed to read this file and use values from it use the last value they find. But adding wrong to wrong is just setting oneself up for future breakage. tl;dr - This patch to gdm reads values from a file that doesn't belong to it, and uses them for purposes that they are not intended. Proposed solution: Have gdm obtain its displayable account UID range from a location designed explicitly for such a purpose. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/459199 Title: Greeter does not show legacy users with uid < 1000 To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/gdm/+bug/459199/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
