[arch-general] Arch pkg user and group IDs?

[Hauke Fath]

Hi,

what are Arch's conventions for the numeric ranges of system (package) 
user and grop IDs? And can the range be limited?

I am working up to switching a few dozen Debian clients to Arch. They 
have user homes on NFS, and authenticate through NIS. So far, nis 
distributes user and group IDs > 500, making anything lower a local / 
system ID. After installing Arch, I see

% awk -F: '{ if ( $3 > 500 ) print }' < /etc/passwd
systemd-journal-remote:x:999:999:systemd Journal Remote:/:/sbin/nologin
systemd-journal-upload:x:998:998:systemd Journal Upload:/:/sbin/nologin
systemd-coredump:x:997:997:systemd Core Dumper:/:/sbin/nologin
% awk -F: '{ if ( $3 > 500 ) print }' < /etc/group
systemd-journal-remote:x:999:
systemd-journal-upload:x:998:
systemd-coredump:x:997:
lightdm:x:620:
%

which collide with NIS users.[1]

My question: Do Arch packages come with hardcoded numerical user/group 
IDs? If not, is there a way to limit the numeric range of system IDs? I 
guess I would still have to reinstall the distribution.

The alternative - a flag day to change NIS user and group IDs as well 
as on 4 TB file storage and local storage on 50 client machines - 
wouldn't be pretty. And I don't really have the time, either. 

Cheerio,
hauke


[1] lightdm appears to be a pathological case: It hardcodes both name 
and ID of its user and group, and installation plows on witjout 
flagging an error even after failing to register the user ID.

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