On Thu, 2009-05-28 at 11:28 +0200, RedShift wrote:
IMNSHO .install scripts should never ever add users or groups, let alone remove them. Everything that would need a user for itself should default to "nobody". Yes, this imposes, though small, a security risk but any decent server admin will move that stuff to its own user.
I've even seen packages that start and stop daemons themselves (shrug!), if it were up to me there would be no such things. But many believe that automatically adding and removing users is "OK". A package should install its program files, and THAT'S IT. Nothing more. It may be a bit a spartan way, but it's reliable (no unexpected surprises) and leads to an uncluttered passwd and group file.
Running everything with the nobody group means that the nobody user will become another superuser. This is a very bad idea. With your "solution", programs that install setuid/setgid files such as policykit become dangerous to install.