is there a future for user accounting (getpw* replacement)

[Igor Mozolevsky]

On Wed, 19 Feb 2020 at 07:58, Anthony Pankov <ap00 at mail.ru> wrote:

<snip>


> I  think  it is  greatly  depends of system appliance.  If we speak
> about   *system*   as  of part of IT infrastructure that provides some
> technical  service  then  I fully agree.  Excess users is disadvantage
> and OS survival is equal to *system* survival.
>
> But   if  our  deployment include applications human interact with
> then  *system*   concept  goes  wider. In this case OS survival is not
> equal  to *system* survival. When users/orgs lost their data or facing
> *system*   malfunction   they   don't  care  that  underlining  OS  did
> survive  and  not compromised.  I think that in wider *system* concept
> idea  to  bring to OS fine tuned users accounting that will be shared between
> applications have to be considered.


Well, a user might care if another user steals the former's data in a
misconfigured system by bypassing application admission control and
going straight to the OS! Like I said before, by the sound of it, what
you want is either RFC4422 (aka SASL), or PAM, if you really have to!


Best,

-- 
Igor M.