[distcc] Re: Red Hat packaging patch for 0.15

[Martin Pool]

On 18 Dec 2002, Ben Elliston <bje at redhat.com> wrote:
> >>>>> "Jean-Eric" == Jean-Eric Cuendet <jean-eric.cuendet at linkvest.com> writes:
> 
>   >> How about creating a "distcc" user if one does not already exist?
> 
>   Jean-Eric> That was the discussion point: don't create a distcc user when running
>   Jean-Eric> rpm installation.
> 
>   Jean-Eric> While?
>   Jean-Eric> - It's hard to remove
> 
> I disagree.  If the RPM is uninstalled, the "functional" user can be
> removed as easily as it was added.

The problem then is that you may have files or processes hanging
around with no name for their uid, which is confusing.

On brief inspection, Debian seems to not remove users when the
packages are removed.  uids are plentiful.

>   Jean-Eric> - You don't know which package created/use a certain user
> 
> What if the username happened to *exactly* match the name of the
> package that installed it?

Yes, I think having a distcc user around is not so confusing.  

The administrator can of course intervene if they want to run the
daemon as some other user.

I should also say that I think that packages should not start the
daemon automatically.  The administrator ought to enable it by some
means appropriate to the distribution -- either answering a
dpkg-config question, or uncommenting it in inetd.conf. 

People may want the server installed but not started, so that users
can start it themselves.  In future they may just want it to start
over ssh...

-- 
Martin