On Mon, Feb 27, 2012 at 10:50:54AM +0100, Daniel Pocock wrote: > A particularly common requirement in email hosting is the use of virtual > mailboxes: private mailboxes that are not associated with individual > UNIX accounts > > Typically, all these mailboxes are owned by a single user, often called > `vmail' in the examples. > > This pattern is supported by many mailers and IMAP servers (e.g. > postfix, courier, dovecot) > > Some examples suggest using a high UID/GID, e.g. 5000/5000, and others > suggest a system UID/GID (e.g. adduser --system vmail) [...] > I would propose that Debian consider: > > a) the allocation of a standard user and group name for these purposes, > either `vmail', `vuser' or `virt' or similar > > b) consider making this a standard uid/gid in base-passwd (uid < 100) > > c) if (b) is not appropriate, maybe propose an alternative standard: > maybe a uid > 65000 in the reserved space? > > The potential benefit of standardising this is that packages could offer > automatic support for virtual hosting, without having to know which > other packages were installed, they would all just work together
Pre-allocated IDs are only necessary when the IDs need to be hardcoded in binary packages somehow. I won't allocate them unless there is no reasonable alternative, as the allocation space is limited (particularly true for the global static IDs below 100). It is always preferable to use techniques such as 'adduser --system' where possible. Why couldn't all packages here simply cooperate in using 'adduser --system vmail' etc., and then look up the user dynamically by name? There seems no reason why the ID numbers themselves need to be the same between different systems or hardcoded in binary packages, so it doesn't seem to me as though base-passwd needs to be involved. -- Colin Watson [[email protected]] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
