Guidance on solving the username namespacing problem

[Sean Whitton]

Hello,

On Sun 05 Jan 2020 at 11:33PM +01, Philipp Kern wrote:

> I'd also propose the following hunk as I was myself confused where this
> list was maintained - base-passwd is mentioned in 0-99 but not
> explicitly in the on demand part. As policy seems to defer to that
> package as the list, it would seem like policy should state this explicitly.
>
>> @@ -268,8 +271,10 @@ The UID and GID numbers are divided into classes as follows:
>>
>>  60000-64999:
>>      Globally allocated by the Debian project, but only created on
>> -    demand. The ids are allocated centrally and statically, but the
>> -    actual accounts are only created on users' systems on demand.
>> +    demand. The ids are allocated centrally, but the actual accounts are
>> +    only created on users' systems on demand. Some of them are statically
>> +    allocated. The authoritative allocation for this range is maintained
>> +    in the ``base-passwd`` package.
>>
>>      These ids are for packages which are obscure or which require many
>>      statically-allocated ids. These packages should check for and create

I think it would be good to say what you mean by 'statically allocated'.
This could be done by combining your last two sentences to say that the
UIDs are statically allocated by means of the base-passwd package.

This is purely informative, not normative, so it doesn't need seconding.

> Now there's the question if we need explicit guidance in the UID bit
> about existing packages as well. How would the following sound instead
> of my prior proposal?
>
>> @@ -259,7 +262,9 @@ The UID and GID numbers are divided into classes as follows:
>>      and differently on each system, should use ``adduser --system`` to
>>      create the group and/or user. ``adduser`` will check for the
>>      existence of the user or group, and if necessary choose an unused id
>> -    based on the ranges specified in ``adduser.conf``.
>> +    based on the ranges specified in ``adduser.conf``. New packages
>> +    should follow the guidance of using an underscore prefix for their
>> +    username.
>>
>>  1000-59999:
>>      Dynamically allocated user accounts. By default ``adduser`` will

I believe this should be a bit broader -- packages which are not new but
which are adding new users should also follow the underscore prefix
convention.

-- 
Sean Whitton
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