Re: What is the role of system user bin?

[Ansgar Burchardt <ansgar@43-1.org>]

Hi,

Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> writes:

> the Debian Med team tries to support the pacakging of a hostpital
> management system which is based on the Mumps implementation GT.M.  The
> actual maintainer wants to use the system user bin as owner of the
> installed files[1].  I personally have no idea for what purpose this
> system user was invented but I doubt that using it as file owner of
> "random" application files is the purpose.  To make sure I can give
> correct advise I would like to know what the purpose of this system
> user ID finally is.
>
> [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-med/2010/08/msg00077.html

The documentation for base-passwd includes this information:

    HELP: No files on my system are owned by user or group bin. What
    good are they? Historically they were probably the owners of
    binaries in /bin? It is not mentioned in the FHS, Debian Policy, or
    the changelogs of base-passwd or base-files.

    LSB 1.3 lists bin as legacy, and says: "The 'bin' UID/GID is
    included for compatibility with legacy applications. New
    applications should no longer use the 'bin' UID/GID."

The Debian Policy Manual also includes a statement about file
permissions and owners in section 10.9:

    Files should be owned by root:root, and made writable only by the
    owner and universally readable (and executable, if appropriate),
    that is mode 644 or 755.

    Directories should be mode 755 or (for group-writability) mode
    2775. The ownership of the directory should be consistent with its
    mode: if a directory is mode 2775, it should be owned by the group
    that needs write access to it.

Regards,
Ansgar