On Fri, 1 Apr 2005, martin f krafft wrote:
also sprach Sven Mueller <debian@incase.de> [2005.04.01.2133 +0200]:way of registering UIDs to packages. And more often than not, usernames are used across multiple packages (even though most are used only by packages generated by the same source package). So which package should remove the user from /etc/passwd?The solution that's gaining popularity is *not* to remove the user. Period.Do you see the implications? No package can tell wether a given user is used only on the current host or not. It usually can't even tell wether users are kept in a local only configuration (/etc/passwd for example) or in a shared database (LDAP or MySQL for example).It should not need to know. adduser/deluser should really be extended to do this transparently. Something make me think that's what adduser-ng is for.
Ya, no need for a package to know; they should request a user be available and announce when they don't need the user anymore, some other pieces of code should work out if any users are actually added or deleted from which systems.
I'm not sure any add/deluser type program is the place to do it though, mostly because all the upstream authors of programs which manage accounts would need to add the functionality, a significant amount of probably Debian specific works (even if implemented as a lib?), for it to be universal[1]. I would be inclined to include code which handles user administration related requests and announcements in with the package management subsytem.
I suspect the core functionality could be handled with a simple counter per package-initiated user acocunt, and a scheme by which add/deluser functional programs can make their existance known and an iface provided for - any desired user friendliness (graphs, charts, stats, etc.) could be added via optional plugins.
Ya, ok, it is still a significant amount of work, but it would be Debian's work and not that of the upstream authors.
- Bruce[1] universal, i.e., a feature of Debian rather than a feature of some programs when run on Debian