[PATCH] fill_user_info: fake user info for 'root' if it can not be found

[Tom Gundersen]

On Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 7:13 PM, Thiago Macieira <thiago at kde.org> wrote:
> If NSS is misconfigured or missing or broken, isn't the system broken? No user
> will be able to log in, probably not even root. You'll need to start that
> system in recovery mode to fix it, in which case you probably don't need D-Bus.

It would arguably be broken yes. However, there is the case for
systems where no user is expected to log in (e.g., an initramfs such
as what I'm working on), so setting up nss might not otherwise be
necessary. Moreover, even if we do consider the system broken, it is
no longer safe to assume that no low-level things use dbus. In
particular, systemd's various tools all use libdbus and might be
useful in a recovery situation. Lastly, it would be nice to get to a
point where a minimal system can boot with an empty /etc. Depending on
your notion of 'minimal', this is one of the few blockers.

> What's more, I'd rather not carry this code inside the daemon and the library
> if it's only ever going to be useful for already-otherwise-broken systems or a
> handful of weird installations with no /etc.

Ok. Fair enough.

> I'd accept the patch only if it's
> #ifdef'ed out by a configure-time option.

Hm, what would be the benefit of making it a config switch? Do you see
cases where the old behavior would be desirable? Is it a security
concern?

Thanks for your comments!

Cheers,

Tom