Adduser devel - May 2008 - Bug#482069: adduser: If uid 999 exists, next system uid will be between 0-99

Package: adduser
Version: 3.107
Severity: normal


If, for whatever reason, there''s a system user having uid 999, adduser
will look for a uid starting from 0 when a new system user is created.

In most cases it will find a free uid between 0-99, which is allocated
by the Debian project and for that reason not desirable.

In stead of what seems to happen in reality, I would expect that adduser
would try to look for a free system uid starting from 100 in stead of 0.
It seems to ignore the value of FIRST_SYSTEM_UID in this process.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, ''testing'')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.24-1-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages adduser depends on:
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]         1.5.21     Debian configuration management sy
ii  passwd                        1:4.1.1-1  change and administer password and
ii  perl-base                     5.10.0-10  The Pathologically Eclectic Rubbis

adduser recommends no packages.

-- debconf information excluded

On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 05:57:50PM +0200, Durk Strooisma wrote:
> 
> If, for whatever reason, there''s a system user having uid 999,
adduser
> will look for a uid starting from 0 when a new system user is created.
I guess the relevant part starts at line 387 off adduser

   elsif (!defined($new_uid) && !$make_group_also) {
        $new_uid = &first_avail_uid($config{"first_system_uid"},
                                   $config{"last_system_uid"});
        if ($new_uid == -1) {
            print STDERR "$0: ";
            printf STDERR gtx("No UID is available in the range %d-%d
(FIRST_SYS_UID -
LAST_SYS_UID).\n"),$config{"first_system_uid"},$config{"last_system_uid"};
            dief (gtx("The user `%s'' was not
created.\n"),$new_name);
        }

if first_avail_uid returns -1 (which is indicating that in the range
FIRST_SYS_UID and LAST_SYS_UID there was no free uid), adduser will stop.
I don''t see any overflow which causes adduser to start at uid 0 again.

Please correct me if I''m wrong, but I don''t get the problem.


J?rg
-- 
What did you do to the cat? It looks half-dead. -Schroedinger''s wife
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> if first_avail_uid returns -1 (which is indicating that in the range
> FIRST_SYS_UID and LAST_SYS_UID there was no free uid), adduser will stop.
> I don''t see any overflow which causes adduser to start at uid 0
again.
>
> Please correct me if I''m wrong, but I don''t get the
problem.
Hi, I didn''t check the code, but while trying to reproduce my described
problem, I couldn''t and saw that I made a terrible mistake. I invoked
useradd in stead of adduser.. :-( Adduser IS working the way you would
expect.
Sorry for the noise. Bug can be closed.

Your message dated Wed, 21 May 2008 10:44:09 +0100
with message-id <20080521094409.GA13138 at www.lobefin.net>
and subject line Re: [Adduser-devel] Bug#482069: adduser: If uid 999 exists,
next system uid will be between 0-99
has caused the Debian Bug report #482069,
regarding adduser: If uid 999 exists, next system uid will be between 0-99
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

(NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what this
message is talking about, this may indicate a serious mail system
misconfiguration somewhere. Please contact owner at bugs.debian.org
immediately.)


-- 
482069: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=482069
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner at bugs.debian.org with problems
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