Bug#654705: manage user/group creation from apt or dpkg
Package: apt
Version: 0.8.10.3+squeeze1
Severity: wishlist
Currently packages can add users and groups from their postinst scripts
The admin has no clear indication which users/groups might be created
when selecting packages to install
This does not meet the needs of all administrators. For example:
- admin wants to use LDAP
- admin wants identical numeric IDs on all hosts to simplify use of
backup and rsync software (e.g. Bacula backs up file ownership numerically)
A more controlled solution might involve some of the following:
- in addition to checking for disk space, `apt-get install' would check
if all required users exist
- apt or dpkg would create the users required by the requested packages
- a setting in dpkg.cfg or apt.conf.d would allow the admin to disable
automatic user creation (in other words, apt-get install would abort
before any change to the system and just give the admin a list of
missing users to create manually)
Workaround: the admin can do things like creating a symlink from
(useradd|adduser) to /bin/false to ensure that dpkg fails on unexpected
user creation. However, this potentially leaves packages partially
installed.
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