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DescriptionJenny Severance
2011-04-20 14:04:10 UTC
+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #697887 +++
Description of problem:
I had created a user "tim" with UID 800 which was put in the ipausers group. Then I created a group "staff" with GID 800. What I didn't know is that the user creation silently created a group "tim" which also had the GID 800, which I didn't expect.
So I ended up with two groups with GID 800. Doing "id tim" on the console then only shows the numeric GID, not any of the two names.
Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
freeipa-server-2.0.0-1.fc15.x86_64
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Create user "test" with UID 800
2. Create group "testgroup" with GID 800
3. Do "ipa group-find" and "ipa group-find --private"
Actual results:
Two groups with GID 800 and different names
Expected results:
The creation of the second group should have reported an error.
--- Additional comment from mkosek on 2011-04-20 08:26:01 EDT ---
Upstream ticket:
https://fedorahosted.org/freeipa/ticket/1183
--- Additional comment from jgalipea on 2011-04-20 10:03:24 EDT ---
This is reproducible:
# ipa user-add --first=Jenny --last=Galipeau --uid=800 --gidnumber=800 jennyg
-------------------
Added user "jennyg"
-------------------
User login: jennyg
First name: Jenny
Last name: Galipeau
Full name: Jenny Galipeau
Display name: Jenny Galipeau
Initials: JG
Home directory: /home/jennyg
GECOS field: jennyg
Login shell: /bin/sh
Kerberos principal: jennyg@TESTRELM
UID: 800
GID: 800
# ipa group-add --desc="test bug 697887" --gid=800 grp697887
-----------------------
Added group "grp697887"
-----------------------
Group name: grp697887
Description: test bug 697887
GID: 800
# id jennyg
uid=800(jennyg) gid=800 groups=800,972400001(ipausers)
Do I read this correctly that there will be no proper technical solution preventing this from happening but to hide it in some footnote or box in the documentation?
Nobody is hiding anything. There is really no technical way to prevent all sorts of different misconfigurations with UID & GID if you decide to override them manually. IPA will do the right thing if you let if deal with UID and GID but if you have to set it up the way you want IPA should not prevent you from doing it.
There are a lot of use cases where for compatibility people would want to mess with GID and UID. We would let them do it but explain the implications and potential problems in the documentation that that they are aware about the problems that their actions might cause.
It is the best solution we can offer.
Do you still disagree?
I would rather like the tool to check if the UID/GID exists, and if it does throw an error. A "force" flag would then allow the admin to override this if he knows what it is doing.
What this does it that it catches a behavior which I presume is most often undesired and unexpected, but still allows it if the admin know what he is doing. Much better than having this in the documentation, which -- let's be honest -- you hardly read from start to end. If the RHEL documentation is similar to the Fedora Guide I admit that it is excellent and helpful documentation, but I tend to read the least amount of documentation as possible and expect tools to help me, to give relevant and useful run-time information, and to prevent typical pitfalls.
Makes sense?
The default behavior of IPA is to let it assign UID/GID so we give the benefit of the doubt if the user provides it. I opened an RFE ticket to do the enforcement and provide a --force override.
https://fedorahosted.org/freeipa/ticket/1231