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Re: Change user used by package



On Tue, 13 Jan 2009 09:15:47 -0800
Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> wrote:

> Harald Braumann <harry@unheit.net> writes:
> > "Francesco P. Lovergine" <frankie@debian.org> wrote:
> >> On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 11:35:49AM +0100, Harald Braumann wrote:
> 
> >>> AFAIK, there's no way for multiple independent packages for using
> >>> the same user. 
> 
> >> Why not? There are already multiple packages that use the same
> >> user, e.g. www-data. You should only create it and never remove to
> >> avoid breakages for other packages installed at the same time.
> >
> > www-data is a globally allocated user. It would of course be
> > possible to switch to such a user, but that would need changes of
> > base-passwd and all jabber-related packages.
> 
> Well, yes, but I don't see why you'd need a globally allocated user.
> Why don't you just use the same username as the other package?  I
> don't see why that wouldn't work, and I don't see anything in Policy
> 9.2 that says you shouldn't do that.

But it's not nice to let stuff lying around after a purge.

> Hm.  I suppose that you'd get in trouble if either package removed the
> user on purge or renamed the user to something else without
> coordination.

That's the problem. All the other package, that use the jabber user
would have to be changed too, so as not to remove the user on purge.
Additionally, jabber-muc would have to conflict with previous versions
of those packages. I thinks its actually a bug, that jabberd2 doesn't
have a conflict with jabber-common (both create/remove the user
jabber, without dependency). I'll file a report.

The other route, of creating a new user and not supporting a downgrade,
seems much saner and more straightforward to me.

Cheers,
harry

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