On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 14:56, Marcus Watts <[email protected]> wrote: > I don't think debian (or ubuntu) make any guarantee uid's will be the > same even on successive machines - it all depends on the order that > software is installed. >
Right. Many software packages have the uids compiled in, but this is generally considered a bad thing (and the workaround is that distribution packages with that problem get their uids promoted into the original password file). One possible mitigation is that, if you install *all* your machines using some form of configuration management, you have control over the order in which packages are installed and therefore some certainty about the order of uids. But this is only reliable if all systems are installed the same way, and no packages are added afterward; this is probably not viable. -- brandon s allbery [email protected] wandering unix systems administrator (available) (412) 475-9364 vm/sms
