[arch-dev-public] Fixing groupadd

[Allan McRae]

Hi,

At the moment, groupadd always creates system groups with GID=99.  
(http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/16092).

We can fix this by adding something quite standard like:
SYS_UID_MIN = 100
SYS_GID_MIN = 100
SYS_UID_MAX = 999
SYS_GID_MAX = 999
in /etc/login.defs

But this will lead to possible issues with packages using fixed GID >= 
100.  e.g. I could create a bunch system groups and then install a 
package who has predetermined that an already used group ID is for it.

There are two possible solutions:
1) Set SYS_{U,G}ID_MIN to (e.g.) 500 and have all packages use numbers 
below 500.
2) Have the packages create a group without a specified ID.  Anything 
requiring a fixed group ID at compile time (e.g. mailman) must use a 
number < 100.

I am in favour of #2 (slightly) as it seems the better solution, but #1 
would only require shadow to be fixed and no rebuilds for other packages 
(the number of rebuilds for #2 would be very small). Opinions?

Allan