Re: user private groups and a src group

[vojta@math.berkeley.edu (Paul Vojta)]

	Date: Wed, 16 Mar 94 20:57 PST
	From: birkholz@midnight.com (Matt Birkholz)
	To: debian-user@pixar.com
	Subject: user private groups and a src group

	uid==gid is a convenience.  It is not needed to implement the proposal.

Correct.  Having user private groups does not require uid==gid.
But actually, in what sense is having uid==gid a convenience?  It seems to
be more of an aesthetic preference.

	Calling it "the uid==gid proposal" is a misnomer.  Please stop it.

Has the proposal changed since Ian Jackson's message of 8 March?  I remind
you that he wrote:

	The one major system I came across recently where it [the proposal]
	wasn't done wished they had done it, but they couldn't now because
	they'd already assigned the uid/gid numbers and they were too hard
	to change.

	[...]

	Please can we have this in before Debian 1.0 - otherwise we're going
	to find it virtually impossible to migrate, because all the
	installations will already have groups with the gids we're going to
	need to use.  This arrangement is quite hard to retrofit, but very
	easy and straightforward to do from the beginning.

It seems that he is saying that in order to have uid==gid, we need
to do this from the beginning instead of switching over later.

But if you drop the uid==gid requirement, then the system will still
work _and it will be easy to retrofit_.  Sysadmins can switch over
to the system wholly, partially, or not at all, as they see fit.

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*	So we don't need to make it a mandatory part of debian.		*
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How 'bout it?

--Paul Vojta, vojta@math.berkeley.edu