[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#1019245: shadow: useradd patch from upstream: avoid creating several GB worth of sparse lastlog and faillog files

[Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues]

Source: shadow
Version: 1:4.11.1+dfsg1-2
Severity: wishlist
Tags: patch
X-Debbugs-Cc: josch at debian.org

Hi,

David Kalnischkies created https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow/pull/558
against shadow upstream which got merged into master with
https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow/commit/ebf9b232b012725d2be5e750876c7336cf1c37fd
Please consider backporting that patch to the Debian packaging.

This change is useful because otherwise useradd will potentially create several
hundred (!!) GB worth of sparse files for users with high user id values even
in cases where there is no data to zero-out. To prevent this, people have
started calling useradd with --no-log-init. This has even made it into the
docker best practices:
https://docs.docker.com/develop/develop-images/dockerfile_best-practices/#user

I created a merge request on salsa for your convenience:

https://salsa.debian.org/debian/shadow/-/merge_requests/16

Thanks!

cheers, josch