Bug#3036: automatic adduser/addgroup in postinst (was Re: fingerd)

[Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk>]

Package: base
Version: 1.1.0-7

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Miquel van Smoorenburg writes ("Re: automatic adduser/addgroup in postinst (was Re: fingerd)"):
...
> Yeah but Debian 1.1 has 100-108 or so allocated to qmail users. I
> had to move all staff users from the 100-200 range to 2100-2200..
> not a nice job, since the UIDs were also recorded in SQL databases
> etc...

This is a bug in the base system, I believe.  Our uid (and gid)
allocation structure is
  0-99       base system maintainer, allocated centrally
  100-999    allocated dynamically and locally by adduser (and so may
             not be preempted centrally) for system accounts
  1000-$     allocated dynamically for ordinary users
  65534      `nobody', allocated centrally

If qmail really needs 8 uids then it ought IMO to allocate them
dynamically; anything that needs 8 compiled-in uids is being
gratuitous in its use of an obviously limited resource.

If we really need more centrally allocated uids I would suggest
starting them at 60000 or so - many mixed-vendor sites can't use uids
>32767 anyway because of signed/unsigned bugs in their systems :-).

Ian.