remove fedora-usermgmt?

[Axel Thimm]

On Thu, Mar 08, 2007 at 11:18:39PM +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Mar 2007 22:34:54 +0100, Axel Thimm wrote:
> 
> > > So, in your scenario any package that does "useradd foo" goes "boom"?
> > 
> > No, not my scenario, but any scenario. There are two kind of packages:
> > 
> > a) packages not requiring fixed uid/gids: useradd -r is more than
> >    enough
> 
> For single hosts. Maybe. The next time you reinstall from scratch,
> you cannot predict whether you end up with the same uids/gids, though.
> 
> Just to be sure, don't get me wrong. It's not a feature with a huge target
> group.
> 
> > b) packages requiring fixed uid/gids: fedora-usermgmt's default of
> >    going useradd -r breaks the promise of fixed or semi-fixed uids/gids
> 
> For _fixed_ (!) uids/gids, you don't use fedora-usermgmt, but useradd -u.
> 
> useradd -r does not yield fixed, static or predictable results. And
> fedora-usermgmt (when enabled) gives predictable and static uids/gids,
> albeit not fixed ones. You don't need it when you need fixed uids/gids.
> 
> Fixed => fixed world-wide => because a uid/gid may be compiled into the
> software (!) and must be the same for every installation of Fedora.
> This is not something fedora-usermgmt is used for.

Exactly, so what *is* it used for? Not for fixed uids, not for
non-fixed uids. But for "predictable" ones? Predictable by whom? The
next package cannot predict what the previous one used, and indeed
fedora-usrmgmnt is not even used that way.

So predictable means for a human being that is able to add 300 plus
42. What's the benefit of these predictable uids? None, really.

The promise of fedora-usermgmt was to deal with packages requiring
*fixed* uids but these ran out so to the rescue came
fedora-usermgmt. But we now agree that it does not really solve a
fixed uid's problem, that's good.

> > > > What? It does run at package installation time, right? That's far
> > > > from being repository level. To put the above example in very
> > > > simple words: Install package A with "usermgmt"-uid 42, then
> > > > configure usermgmt, then install package B which will have a
> > > > completely different view of "usermgmt"-uid 42.
> > > 
> > > It provides means to avoid that *if* you want that.
> > 
> > OK, I bite. Which means does it provide?
> 
> less fedora-usermgmt.spec ; echo "And I've never said it would be pretty..."

Nice, in case you ever have any question my answer will be

find . -name \*.c -or \*.h | xargs cat

So, please either explain what magic mechanism exists or not.
-- 
Axel.Thimm at ATrpms.net
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