UID/GID dynamic allocation in net/isc-dhcp3-server: why?

[Florent Thoumie]

Kris Kennaway wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 11, 2006 at 10:05:05PM +0100, Simon L. Nielsen wrote:
>> On 2006.11.11 15:48:05 -0500, Kris Kennaway wrote:
>>> On Sat, Nov 11, 2006 at 09:37:31PM +0100, Simon L. Nielsen wrote:
>>>> On 2006.11.11 21:12:09 +0200, Dmitry Pryanishnikov wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>  I don't like the current behaviour of the net/isc-dhcp3-server port
>>>>> of creating 'dhcpd' user and group using dynamic allocation instead of
>>>>> having static one (as specified in /usr/ports/{U,G}IDs). I like the idea
>>>>> of [ug]id ranges, and dynamic allocation doesn't keep within this idea
>>>>> (ids of users and daemons get mixed). Is there specific reason why there
>>>>> is no static [ug]id for net/isc-dhcp3-server?
>>>> Personally I have it precisely the other way around - I find the
>>>> static allocations rather annoying since they are bound to collide
>>>> with existing UID's at some point.
>>>>
>>>> IMO the optimal solution would be to have some magic which auto
>>>> assigns ports/system UID/GID's from different ranges that normal
>>>> users.
>>> Just so :)
>>>
>>> UIDs below 1000 are (and have been for many years) allocated to the
>>> "system" (ports/src), and are not supposed to be allocated by
>>> administrators.  This at least works out of the box with some of the
>>> tools we have for allocating new users, so are you aware of any that
>>> don't do this?
>> I know that people are not suposed to use < 1000 and for normal users
>> and I havent seen any FreeBSD tools which uses low UID's for normal
>> users by default.  I don't do use low UID's new systems/sites, but
>> sometimes you have "old" systems/sites where that is just not the
>> case.  I'm certainly not saying we should bent over backwards to
>> support these legacy systems, I just want to point out that they do
>> exist.  I'm really not trying to start a big debate over static
>> vs. dynamic UID/GID allocations, the original mail just made it sound
>> to me like it was a universal truth that ports should use hardcoded
>> UID/GID's and it was always a good thing.
>>
>> And the site where I have UID/GID's in the < 1000 range is called
>> FreeBSD.org :-) (we use UID/GID's from 500 and up).
> 
> I dunno what you are suggesting could be done on systems where the
> administrators have chosen to ignore the conventions.  Even supposing
> the <1000 range was dynamically remapped to some other range on such
> systems, what's to stop the rogue admin from allocating there too?

I have a bsd.port.mk patch in the works to create users/groups
automatically from uids/gids registered in the related files. It
wouldn't be too hard to include a UID_OFFSET/GID_OFFSET parameter so
that the local admin can reserve uids/gids in say range 2000-3000
instead of 0-1000 (which isn't really 0-1000 but I'm too lazy to check
where system uids/gids stop :-)

Would it be alright with you Simon?

-- 
Florent Thoumie
flz at FreeBSD.org
FreeBSD Committer

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