Re: Bits from the release team: the plans for etch

[Humberto Massa <humberto.massa@almg.gov.br>]

Andreas Barth wrote:
> * Humberto Massa (humberto.massa@almg.gov.br) [051026 18:28]:
> > Andreas Barth wrote:
> > > * Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña (jfs@computer.org) [051026 18:09]:
> > > > "We can provide a sensible default for system users' removals that
> > > > copes with most situations and leave a door open (through debconf)
> > > > to sysadmins that want to fiddle with system users."
> > > I really want to warn to try to be too smart by half. Reserving the 
> > > name/uid-space by not removing the accounts works reasonable well,
> > > and having at maximum 5-10 unnecessary accounts is also not the end
> > > of the world either.
> > Problem being, if daemons don't remove their (supposedly exclusive-use)
> > accounts, you can end in two years with 100 unnecessary accounts in a
> > workstation.
>
> How many daemon packages do you install in two years? I even doubt that
> we have 100 packages that add accounts at all in debian.

count them and you'll see. Remember sarge has 17000 packages, how many 
of those do you think can add a user?

in my workstation I try out a new package (for scientfic computing, a 
game for Lucas, a new development package) at least once each two days, 
and a lot of times they come with their libs and their daemons -- and 
their users. So I see them, and think "oh, no, this is not what I 
thought it would be", and --purge them. And the daemons' users pile up 
in /etc/passwd.

--
HTH
Massa