GNU bug report logs - #36508
GDM files have incorrect owner after temporarily replacing with SDDM

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Message #66 received at 36508 <at> debbugs.gnu.org (full text, mbox):

From: Maxime Devos <maximedevos <at> telenet.be>
To: 36508 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: [DRAFT PATCH] Stable allocation of uids, by keeping a historical
 mapping.
Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2022 14:22:36 +0200

[Message part 1 (text/plain, inline)]

Hi,

The attached patch maintains a historical mapping from user names to 
UIDs/GIDs (even when those users are removed from the user accounts), to 
solve <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/36508>, as proposed by Mark H Weaver 
in <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/36508#10>.

(The proposed garbage collector is not included, however.)

As I proposed in <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/36508#14>, the information 
of this mapping is kept in a special 'user'.  However, I didn't 
implement the same for groups (raises some questions about atomicity -- 
/etc/passwd and /etc/groups are separate files).

I didn't completely follow that proposal though, since:

> https://issues.guix.gnu.org/36508#16:
> Problem is that things like GDM would still propose those old accounts
> (unless maybe their password is uninitialized, I’m not sure; but it’s
> still hacky.)

, though that could perhaps be solved by adjusting GDM appropriately.

"make check TESTS=tests/accounts.scm" passes, but otherwise the patch is 
rather untested (hence, 'DRAFT') -- the new functionality will need a 
few additional tests in tests/account.scm, to avoid introducing bugs in 
the handling of /etc/passwd.

On second thought, a separate /etc/previous-uids (as proposed in
<https://issues.guix.gnu.org/36508#16> by Ludovic Courtès)
might be better (there are atomicity issues anyway, due to /etc/passwd 
and /etc/groups being separate files, and losing the historical mapping
is relatively harmless and seems unlikely to happen in practice).

Greetings,
Maxime

[0001-DRAFT-Stable-allocation-of-uids.patch (text/x-patch, attachment)]

[OpenPGP_0x49E3EE22191725EE.asc (application/pgp-keys, attachment)]

[OpenPGP_signature (application/pgp-signature, attachment)]

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