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Re: Using the user nobody in my package



also sprach Thomas Goirand <thomas@goirand.fr> [2006.11.15.2340 +0100]:
> For that system, we run in only one single UID/GID in the system: we use
> nobody:nogroup for all the hosted files. That includes: ftp access, mail
> system (delivered in user mailbox as nobody), and web. The control panel
> does the change of the User and Group directive in Apache so it doesn't
> use www-data anymore.

Why nobody? Why don't you create your own user? Other daemons run as
nobody and can hence access and manipulate files, potentially.

> Daniel suggested that there was the possibility of setting-up
> a specific user "dtc" that I could setup on my postinst script.
> But this leads to MANY problems that I will explain here. First,
> there is no way to guarantee that the UID will be always the same,
> and that's the main problem.

Why do you care about the UID? I agree with Daniel, make a user dtc.

> If you have many servers using the control panel like we do (we
> run more than 100 servers using it ATM in production), and need to
> move files from one server to another, then the UID wont be the
> same. It would be really anoying to do chown all the time.

rsync and others usually copy files by user name, not UID. For
instance, you have to pass --numeric-ids to rsync to make it *not*
do that.

> With other operating systems running the same control panel, the 1/
> might be even worth.

Don't ever assume you know the UID.

> Most daemons we use are running by default using nobody:nogroup,
> so it might be quite complicate to have it use another UID.

Well, you'll have to. Sorry.

I suggest you make it configurable this time by using a variable or
#define setting. :_)

Thanks for your work regardless; looks cool.

-- 
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