Bug 10196

Summary:	/etc/passwd, /etc/group contains too many default entries
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	Kjetil T. Homme <kjetilho>
Component:	setup	Assignee:	Bill Nottingham <notting>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	6.1	CC:	rvokal
Target Milestone:	---
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Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
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Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2000-03-15 23:31:12 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Kjetil T. Homme 2000-03-15 23:26:17 UTC

All these users should be installed by the corresponding package instead

mail:x:8:12:mail:/var/spool/mail:
news:x:9:13:news:/var/spool/news:
uucp:x:10:14:uucp:/var/spool/uucp:
gopher:x:13:30:gopher:/usr/lib/gopher-data:
ftp:x:14:50:FTP User:/home/ftp:
xfs:x:100:101:X Font Server:/etc/X11/fs:/bin/false
gdm:x:42:42::/home/gdm:/bin/bash
postgres:x:40:233:PostgreSQL Server:/var/lib/pgsql:/bin/bash
squid:x:23:23::/var/spool/squid:/dev/null

We already have a good few of these defined in NIS, with conflicting
UIDs, GIDs and even home directories of course.  The postinstall script
should only add the user if needed, and use chown to fix things up.
I'd rather live with the spurious warnings from "rpm -Va" than the chaos
today.  (We would have avoided the problem with ftp, since we don't need
anonftp on Linux ;-)

postgresql has a different bug as a bonus:  GIDs (or UIDs) above 99
should never EVER be used by the OS -- those values are reserved for
local use.

Comment 1 Bill Nottingham 2000-03-15 23:31:59 UTC

xfs, gdm, postgres, and squid are installed by the packages.

As for postgres's GID ending up above 100, there was apparently
a conflict when the package was installed; as of the current
tree in rawhide, all conflicts should be resolved (except
for user-added system IDs.)

We can't remove users from the /etc/passwd and group provided
by the setup package (to move them to other packages), becuase
there's no way to propagate this on upgrades, as /etc/passwd
and /etc/group are never replaced on upgrades.

Comment 2 Kjetil T. Homme 2000-03-16 00:54:59 UTC

Sorry about the red herrings.

Even if it is impossible to fix it by upgrading the packages, it would
be nice if it was changed for fresh installs (coordinated with changes in
anonftp and inn, of course).

Kjetil T. (very impressed by the quick turnaround again and again)