[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: [adduser] default group for 'dynamically allocated system users'



Hi!

On Mon, 2022-07-04 at 09:12 +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> adduser has been putting newly created 'dynamically allocated system
> users' (adduser --system) into the nogroup group. It is also
> documented to do so. There is an ancient bug report complaining about
> this, and I think this is a valid complaint. However,
> /usr/share/doc/base-passwd/users-and-groups.txt.gz says that no files
> should ever be owned by nogroup, making adduser do the right thing in
> its current state.
> 
> Can you come up with a better default for users created with adduser
> --system without requesting a dedicated group?

One idea worth considering, imho, is what the reporter [0] suggests:
make --group the default for --system.

This will add one group for every system user (that is currently
created without --group).. not unreasonable overhead for slightly
improved security posture.  Sysadmin hat, I can think of situations
where having a dedicated service group is useful (eg. giving r/o access
to logs).

Having two unrelated services share a GID is just an unnecessary risk;
probably should not be the default.

> 
> Greetings
> Marc

Cheers,
Matt


[0] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=693218

Attachment: signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part


Reply to: