Re: Keysafe dynamic UID

[Christian Seiler <christian@iwakd.de>]

On 10/24/2016 12:42 AM, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 22, 2016 at 02:57:23PM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote:
>> I am packaging Keysafe,[1] and the binary package keysafe-server needs
>> to create a new system user with a dynamically allocated UID.
>>
>> I am using the username 'keysafe'.  I do not anticipate any collision
>> with any other package, but policy says I should e-mail you to confirm
>> that.
> 
> Policy should probably only suggest emailing the base-passwd maintainer
> in the case where you need a statically-allocated ID

The requirement to have this for dynamically allocated IDs also
probably stems from the fact that the users created in postinst scripts
should not conflict. But wouldn't it be far easier to just create a
page on the Debian Wiki and track that there? [1] And have policy say
to check that list to see that it's unique and add your package + user
there when you are about to upload a new package? That way, in 99.9% of
cases where users are required, and they don't conflict with existing
ones, there's no additional work for people other than the package
maintainer, and the package maintainer doesn't have to wait for a
response before they are able to proceed. And if there really is a
conflict, people can still post to -devel about it.

Regards,
Christian

[1] If there is consensus on this, I'd volunteer to go through the
    archive and create the initial page with a current list of system
    users.