[systemd-devel] Custom nobody user/group name not equivalent

[Opty]

On Wed, Apr 17, 2024 at 5:31 PM Lennart Poettering
<lennart at poettering.net> wrote:
> This is a place where distros should not depart from each
> other. Calling the user "nobody" and the group the same is simply the
> least surprising thing: it's comonly understood that user's which have
> their own matching groups should also name them the same
> way. Derparting from that rule just to be different is just annoying.

I can probably agree although different name for the group might
suggest that special case(s) exist(s) where nogroup contains regular
user(s). (Actually, most probably no such case exists.)

> This is a warning, to push distros to just stop trying to be different
> in this corner case, it's a waste of brain cells having to deal with
> pointless differences like this everywhere.

I understand that but then you should probably make no exceptions like
nogroup in Debian and keep just one option to set a name.

> let me turn this around: why do you think it's a great idea for
> slackware being its own thing and naming these groups completely
> differently for everyone?

Slackware plans to convert back again:

-8<-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Once upon a time we were encouraged to go against long-standing UNIX
# traditions and use 99:99 for nobody:nogroup.
# This may have been a bad idea.
# But since to change this we'll have to dig through the system and make
# sure that nothing hardcodes 99:99, we'll leave it as-is for now.
# It's more than likely on the TODO list to change these back to
# 65534:65534, however.
-8<-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

It actually already provides the nobody group, just with an unsuitable GID (98).

Anyway, I take that warning as rather political than technical.

I have disabled e-mail delivery so Cc me please.

Regards,
Opty