Feature changed by: Ned Ulbricht (ned_ulbricht) Feature #310922, revision 9 Title: central system user registry openSUSE-11.4: Rejected by Ludwig Nussel (lnussel) reject reason: wasn't implemented Priority Requester: Important openSUSE Distribution: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Ludwig Nussel (lnussel) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: Once upon a time all systems users were defined in aaa_base via the default /etc/passwd file. When the uid space below uid 100 got too small a new dynamic range between 100 and 499 was introduced. So nowadays packages dynamically create a user in %pre which gets a random uid in this range. Disadvantage: uids are different on every system. Usually this is not a problem but for programs that export files over the network it is. TV recordings made by VDR for example. useradd has a --preferred-uid option for such cases. It's possible to specify a uid and useradd tries to use it. If it's already taken another one is chosen. Thefore I'd propose to leverage that feature: - introduce a central uid registry for system users, e.g a file in aaa_base - lower SYSTEM_UID_MAX (/etc/login.defs) to e.g. 349 and assign "preferred uids" in the rage 350-499. - change useradd calls in packages to a macro that transparently decides whether a preferred uid needs to be used. Use Case: - two systems running vdr, one for recording, the other one for playback on a TV want to share recordings via nfs. - avoid packagers picking too generic user names Discussion: #1: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2011-03-15 15:15:13) Recent kernels use NFS4 by default, which transmits the username rather than UID, so the issue is basically resolved in openSUSE 11.4 already. + #2: Ned Ulbricht (ned_ulbricht) (2011-03-16 14:47:12) (reply to #1) + "Resolved" is a strong word there. :-) + Identity management is a large space with a multiplicity of complexity. + There are numerous solutions in this space. For instance, NIS was + invented to deal with this problem. Then LDAP solutions came along. + These days, I believe Red Hat has some kind of product competing + against Microsoft's Active Directory. And I'd call attention to + Novell's eDirectory product + (http://www.novell.com/products/edirectory/) . + Anyhow, I couldn't help but comment on your use of the word "resolved" + there. For the benefit of others who may be reading, I think it's worth + generally waving in the direction of some of software shipped with + openSUSE or compatible with the platform. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/310922