Bug#429671: exim4 username

[Stephen Frost-2]

Package: tech-ctte
Severity: normal
User: exim4@...
Usertags: Debian-exim

Greetings,

  As outlined in bugs: #223831, #223963, #225031, #233803, #255493,
  #262195, not everyone agrees with the concept of having a 'namespace'
  for Debian-created system accounts.  It would be of great benefit to
  have an official ruling from the tech committee on this issue.

  For my part (and Marc can provide his counterpart), I don't feel it's
  possible, or appropriate, for Debian to try to solve the
  username-collision problem.  The best thing to do is be consistant and
  clean, but also flexible and allow the user to change the username if
  they need to.  Clearly any username picked by Debian could be used by
  a user (especially in a multi-server arrangment with multiple Debian
  systems using a common username directory) and in such situations
  conflict is inevitable and unavoidable, even with 'namespace' concept.
  Additionally, I don't feel it's appropriate for Debian to try and
  co-opt any part of the username 'namespace' from the user.

  Thanks,

                Stephen

[Marc Haber-2]

On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 08:50:46AM -0400, Stephen Frost wrote:
>   (and Marc can provide his counterpart)

Quoting from
http://wiki.debian.org/PkgExim4UserFAQ#head-5f48a235d10056162d9dae836a41e2c423f13e87:

The user name Debian-$PACKAGE was chosen in late 2003 when we, the
maintainers of the Debian exim4 package found it necessary to create
an account for exim to run under during package installation. To avoid
accidentylly zapping a locally used account, we intended to use a name
from a name space with low potential for name conflicts.

About the same time, Fabio Massimo Di Nitto started the same
(http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/11/msg02231.html)
discussion on debian-devel.

In this thread, many things were said:

* This should be decided by the LSB. However, to my knowledge, that
  step has not yet happened.
 
* It needs to be in policy. However, policy has not been amended, and
  there is no bug filed against policy.
 
* Purging a package should remove the account as well.
 
* Special care needs to be taken to avoid removing an account that
  doesn't belong to us.
 
* The numeric UID shouldn't be re-used.
 
For the namespaces, we have the following suggestions:

* Prepend/Append "Debian" or "debian"
 
* Prepend/Append a single )http://cr.yp.to/unixaccount.html) capital letter

* Prepend/Append an underscore
 
Unfortunately, the way to get a LSB solution will take way too long.
Additionally, the LSB likes to have pre-existing use as example before
they change the standard.

So, it was our job to decide which account name to use. Andreas
Metzler and me chose Debian-$PACKAGE, while Peter Palfrader started
using debian-$PACKAGE. So we currently have Debian-exim,
Debian-console-log, debian-tor, debian-mixminion and debian-sks.

Again, the goal was to create accounts that don't conflict with other,
or with manually created accounts, and to get pre-existing use before
trying to change the LSB and even Debian policy.

Migrating from one account name to another is extremely painful and
error-pronce since one needs to meddle with the local account database
and has to optionally chown files. Additionally, it is necessary to
change every script that accesses the account. To put it short: It's
something you want to avoid.

This is also the reason why the account names used by these packages
will not likely change before a namespace is dedicated and allocated
either in the LSB or in Debian policy. The maintainers reserve the
right of hurling this FAQ in the direction of everybody filing bugs
about the "ugly" account names, and to close the bugs in the process.

We would appreciate, however, if people would aid in getting the
standardization process under way as soon as possible. This needs to
be in policy, the sooner the better.

end quote.

I do not have anything to add and would appreciate a final decision
and a policy amendment.

Greetings
Marc

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[Don Armstrong]

On Tue, 19 Jun 2007, Marc Haber wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 08:50:46AM -0400, Stephen Frost wrote:
> >   (and Marc can provide his counterpart)
>
> We would appreciate, however, if people would aid in getting the
> standardization process under way as soon as possible. This needs to
> be in policy, the sooner the better.

Based on this, I think that debian-policy is the appropriate place to
deal with this issue (at least to start with.)

If -policy is unable to come up with a reasonable consensus (or wants
the ctte to decide between two conflicting proposals) it can be
assigned back, but without a clear standard to decide between, a vote
by the ctte is premature.
 
If no one objects, I'll reassign this bug to -policy in the next few
days.
 

Don Armstrong

--
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possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to
get at or repair.
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http://www.donarmstrong.com              http://rzlab.ucr.edu



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[Don Armstrong]

reassign 429671 debian-policy
thanks

On Sat, 25 Jul 2009, Don Armstrong wrote:
> If -policy is unable to come up with a reasonable consensus (or
> wants the ctte to decide between two conflicting proposals) it can
> be assigned back, but without a clear standard to decide between, a
> vote by the ctte is premature.

Reassigning to debian-policy.


Don Armstrong

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B: Because it's a fact."
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   That's your argument?
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[Debian Bug Tracking System]

Processing commands for control@...:

> reassign 429671 debian-policy
Bug #429671 [tech-ctte] exim4 username
Bug reassigned from package 'tech-ctte' to 'debian-policy'.
Bug #429671 [debian-policy] exim4 username
Ignoring request to alter found versions of bug #429671 to the same values previously set
Bug #429671 [debian-policy] exim4 username
Ignoring request to alter fixed versions of bug #429671 to the same values previously set
> thanks
Stopping processing here.

Please contact me if you need assistance.

Debian bug tracking system administrator
(administrator, Debian Bugs database)


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