On 30 Dec 1997, Curt Sampson wrote:

> On Wed, 30 Dec 1998, Hubert Feyrer wrote:

> > 1. Every package should care to create the accounts it needs.
> >    We don't carry stuff for pkgs not installed around either -
> >    /usr/pkg is empty on new systems (if it exists at all). Any
> >    account flying around unused is just a potential security hole.

> The problem with this is IDs. If the account is already there, you
> can fit it into NetBSD's `standard' scheme for account IDs; if it's
> not, you either run the risk of overwriting an ID that someone's
> created, or end up creating a different UID number on every system,
> which makes life inconvenient, at best, in installations with
> multiple machines. How do you deal with a shared install of MySQL
> where it's on one central server shared via NFS, but the password
> files on all the machines are different, for example?

With all due respect, because this is a good point, this really *isn't* the
purview of the NetBSD project to be worrying about.  This is something that
the site administrators at these sites need to worry about.  What if they're
in the middle of switching from another OS, where these accounts were on a
different UID?  What if they're in the middle of consolidating a bunch of
separate machines, all done differently, and are working on giving them one
homogenous user database?

It's all fine and good to try to anticipate the user's needs, but account
administration should be left to the end-user, not the NetBSD team.  It's
assumed that any adminsitrator who is dealing with the situations you
describe above is going to be competent to deal with those issues, and those
who aren't dealing with those situations -- most likely Microsoft refugees
trying out one of the free *nixes for the first time -- are going to have
one less possible security whole open on their system while they're learning
the ropes.

--
Devin L. Ganger
Chief Systems Administrator, Premier1 Internet Services, Inc., Sultan, WA
"....yet he is not two, but one Christ; one, not by conversion of
the Godhead into flesh, but by taking of the Manhood into God...."
The Creed of Saint Athanasius, on the nature of Jesus Christ