Bug#329701: [Adduser-devel] Bug#329701: Local (non-NIS) users and groups

[Marc Haber]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 08:08:50AM +0100, Teddy Hogeborn wrote:
> Marc Haber <mh+debian-packages at zugschlus.de> writes:
> > Not having a clue about NIS and never having had any sizeable amount
> > of local users, I'd like to have an "executive summary" for this bug
> > report.
> > 
> > Which change is suggested to adduser?
> 
> The change of LAST_SYSTEM_UID in /etc/adduser.conf from 999 to 499.

/etc/adduser.conf is a conffile. The range 100-999 is laid down in
policy 9.2.2, so changing the default in adduser is out of the question.

> If this is done, Group IDs of 500 to 999 can be used for NIS-exported
> groups, but this is not anything which adduser has to be concerned
> about.

Right, adduser can be locally configure to handle this.

> One additional possibility is for adduser to support an interface to
> add users/groups in this new range, which would involve a new
> configuration option and at least one new command line option.  But
> this is not necessarily requested or required.

I'm actually not convinced that this would do any good. adduser
traditionally does not care about NIS/LDAP setup, and I think that
accounts and groups that will appear on multiple systems should not be
created by adduser.

Greetings
Marc

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