Hi, Andreas Tille <andr...@an3as.eu> writes:
> the Debian Med team tries to support the pacakging of a hostpital > management system which is based on the Mumps implementation GT.M. The > actual maintainer wants to use the system user bin as owner of the > installed files[1]. I personally have no idea for what purpose this > system user was invented but I doubt that using it as file owner of > "random" application files is the purpose. To make sure I can give > correct advise I would like to know what the purpose of this system > user ID finally is. > > [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-med/2010/08/msg00077.html The documentation for base-passwd includes this information: HELP: No files on my system are owned by user or group bin. What good are they? Historically they were probably the owners of binaries in /bin? It is not mentioned in the FHS, Debian Policy, or the changelogs of base-passwd or base-files. LSB 1.3 lists bin as legacy, and says: "The 'bin' UID/GID is included for compatibility with legacy applications. New applications should no longer use the 'bin' UID/GID." The Debian Policy Manual also includes a statement about file permissions and owners in section 10.9: Files should be owned by root:root, and made writable only by the owner and universally readable (and executable, if appropriate), that is mode 644 or 755. Directories should be mode 755 or (for group-writability) mode 2775. The ownership of the directory should be consistent with its mode: if a directory is mode 2775, it should be owned by the group that needs write access to it. Regards, Ansgar -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-mentors-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/874oecy3ne....@marvin.43-1.org