Adduser devel - Jan 2010 - Bug#243929: Probably not the right place for this

tags 243929 +wontfix
thanks

Hi,

I think that if Debian wants to allocate uids/gids statically, we have a
system for that, and adduser isn''t it.  If a sysadmin wants to do the
same locally, adduser isn''t the right tool for the job.  You need to be
looking at directory services of some type (ldap/nis/etc).  If a user is
in your directory service, adduser won''t add another user of the same
name locally.

Cheers,
-- 
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|   ,''''`.                                            Stephen
Gran |
|  : :'' :                                        sgran@debian.org |
|  `. `''                        Debian user, admin, and developer |
|    `-                                     http://www.debian.org |
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Processing commands for control at bugs.debian.org:
> tags 243929 +wontfix
Bug #243929 [adduser] adduser: Reserve specific UIDs for users that will be
created at a later time
Added tag(s) wontfix.
> thanks
Stopping processing here.

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On Sun, Jan 31, 2010 at 01:20:34PM +0000, Stephen Gran
wrote:
>tags #243929 wontfix
This is really sad news, as this feature would really be useful.
> You need to be
> looking at directory services of some type (ldap/nis/etc).  If a user is
> in your directory service, adduser won''t add another user of the
same
> name locally.
A directory service is fine if all machines are near each other, are
under the same organization''s control and have a reliable network
connection to a central point.

However, this is not always the case. For example, I am providing
sysadmin services to a variety of organizations, some of them even
fiercely competing each other. While I try to have all my boxes
looking similiarly (which includes "fixed" UIDs for package-based and
other accounts), most of my customers would vigorously complain if I
tried to put the machines I admin for them under a directory service
that also provides these services to boxes run by their direct
competition.

It would be a very nice thing to be able to pre-allocate UIDs on all
of "my" machines to guarantee that accounts created even by my
co-admins have the same UID on all boxes. Christophs patch does the
job just nicely, and it does so without adding the additional
complexity of a directory service.

The patch is vastly useful. Please reconsider your decision.

Greetings
Marc

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