Re: Best practices on system users and groups

[Lars Wirzenius <liw@liw.iki.fi>]

ma, 2005-10-31 kello 22:03 +0100, Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña
kirjoitti:
> After the feedback of the recent d-d thread, I've adapted the section I wrote
> on the best practices related to system users and groups, it is currently
> available at:
> http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/ch-best-pkging-practices.en.html#s-bpp-lower-privs
> 
> I would like developers to review and provide feedback for that section,
> specially in form of patches. I'm considering doing a bug hunt for:

DON'T do this:

	addgroup --quiet --system $SERVER_GROUP 2>/dev/null ||true

When (not if!) addgroup fails, the poor system administrator gets no
indication of it. This is a bug, and a pretty bad one. 

If adduser isn't quiet enough with --quiet, then fix that, don't hide
real errors. Remove both the redirect and the "|| true".

Also, sticking all the tens of lines of boilerplate code into the
postinst of every package that needs a system user is a good way to
invite trouble. When the boilerplate has a bug (possibly because things
change in the future), it will have to be fixed in dozes on of packages.
It's oh so much more sensible to create a tool that postinsts can call:
if boilerplate code is good enough, then it can easily be abstracted
away.

-- 
Fundamental truth #1: Complexity is the enemy.