Re: Warning: Do NOT upgrade base-passwd in unstable!
On Sun, Jan 20, 2002 at 02:10:40PM -0500, Michael P. Soulier wrote:
> On 20/01/02 Colin Watson did speaketh:
> > By default, most uids in the password file match their gids, aside from
> > a couple of daemons, so I can imagine it being easy to miss.
>
> Only on personal systems.
Well, quite, but the question you snipped was about why the maintainer
didn't notice it. Although I occasionally test packages I build on, say,
my workstation at work, I'll probably only do that if I think the change
is particularly risky.
> I've found that most production systems with large numbers of users
> don't put people in their own groups, they use groups for the purpose
> intended. At my work, we average about 200 people per group.
The problem with this, IMHO, is that it encourages people to set 'umask
022' routinely so that people in the same group can't write to files in
their home directory. They then often forget to set 'umask 002' when
working on shared files.
I think one group per user combined with setgid directories is a much
more practical solution, but I realize that this seems to be a religious
issue.
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
Reply to: