Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 242329
Doing F7 install which includes tclhttpd gives user UID 500
Last modified: 2007-11-30 17:12:06 EST
Description of problem:Doing a DVD install with including all options for the various packages then gives tclhttpd with a user at UID 500 Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible:Every time Steps to Reproduce: 1. Start DVD install 2. For package selection choose select all available options for each package group 3. Now there is a tclhttpd user with UID 500 that conflicts with pre-existing user UIDs that need to be brought back in to the clean install from a partition containing existing user files. Actual results:a tclhttpd user has been created which gives error messages during boot, and also now has a user with UID of 500 which conflicts with the UID of one existing user from previous versions of fedora that will be brought back by adding the user lines to /etc/passwd /etc/group /etc/shadow and /etc/gshadow Expected results: No package should create any users with UID of 500 or above so that these numbers are reserved for new users or pre-existing users from previous versions of the system. Additional info:
Same thing happens when installing dbmail (see bug 244611).
Doing grep UID_MIN /etc/login.defs gives: UID_MIN 500 So this is not where the problem lies.
Yes, that's quite confusing. In previous Fedora releases custom UID/GID values started at 500, while 0-499 was reserved for system resources (there's still lots of free space within that range). With Fedora 7, isn't there such a policy any longer?
This is more than just confusing and is going to mess up a lot of people's machines when a clean install is done, where the previous user files from an untouched partition containing users with UID/GID starting at 500 will directly conflict with these new users created during install. For people looking after machines with a lot of users this is a headache that is best avoided. This policy to create any users with UID >=500 during install should be stopped and return to the previous way of doing things for F8.
*sigh* That's what I get for trying to use fedora-useradd. Tclhttpd was intended to use a system UID, not anything in the 500+ range. I'll fix this for F8, and push and update for F7 that creates the account in the correct uid range. This will only fix it for new installations, though, it won't change the uid for existing tclhttpd installs. That will have to be done manually.
Fixed for F8, and an update has been pushed for F-7. Though as previously noted this update won't be able to fix existing or new DVD installs.
tclhttpd-3.5.1-14.fc7 has been pushed to the Fedora 7 testing repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
tclhttpd-3.5.1-14.fc7 has been pushed to the Fedora 7 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.