On Tue, Feb 19, 2002 at 09:18:38AM +0000, Alan Cox wrote: > > Note that once the program is running, it can use getpwent(). We're talking > Doesn't help you - the password file is not the first package installed on > a typical distro So the goal of this provision is to allow LSB packages to make use of certain non-root facilities before the system has a password file? I'd think the easy way to avoid that nonsense is to specify that an LSB-compliant system gives meaningful results when calling getpwnam() for certain required usernames (whether it uses /etc/passwd, NIS, LDAP, whatever). That one issue doesn't justify hard-coding of arbitrarily-chosen uids for system users. In Debian, our /etc/passwd is provided by base-passwd, which is an "Essential: yes" package of required priority that's part of the base section of the archive. Anyone trying to install an LSB package on Debian before the *installer* has even been allowed to run is engaged in foot-shooting of Olympic proportions. While I don't know whether Debian would be considered a 'typical' distro, I would expect that other common distros are similarly unaffected by this concern. Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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