[Slackbuilds-users] on creating users

[Kees Theunissen]

On Wed, 19 Jun 2013, Robby Workman wrote:

>On Tue, 18 Jun 2013 10:58:03 -0700
>Miguel De Anda <miguel at thedeanda.com> wrote:
>
>> thanks. i guess the safest answer is to not automatically create the
>> user. i'm thinking of adding a note in the slack-desc and possibly in
>> the rc script as well. something along the lines of
>>
>> echo "$PRGNAME failed to start because it requires a group/user
>> $GRPNAME/$USRNAME"
>> exit 1
>
>
>I think it's needless cruft in the slack-desc.
>
>It *might* be possible to convince me that the init script would
>be a decent place to do that.  r
>
>-RW
>

An application or daemon should IMHO not chance the system configuration
when started. If a program can not run as intended/configured if should
simply fail to start and log/report that failure.

If (a badly written) daemon would run as root when the intended user/group
is missing then the init script should test if the user/group exists.

You (RW) wrote yesterday:
   ... so I'd rather have something fail
   horribly due to a missing user/group than have a stealthily
   created (and wrong/inconsistent) user and uid present.

I'd rather have things fail nicely in such a case.  :-)

Groeten,

Kees.

-- 
Kees Theunissen, Systeem- en netwerkbeheerder,   Tel: 030-6096724
Dutch Institute For Fundamental Energy Research (DIFFER)
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