Re: Adding a users group to /etc/group

[David Brownlee <abs%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Tue, 2 May 2000, Alistair G. Crooks wrote:

> in basesrc/usr.sbin/user/Makefile, there's a target called
> default-group, which is carefully organised to make the default
> group for you, should it not exist.
> 
> If the default group doesn't exist, it starts at 99 and goes down
> by 1, trying to find an unused group. If that is exhausted, it then
> goes up from 101, trying to allocate a gid, and stopping at 60000,
> when it calls it a day.
> 
> The reason for doing this was so that the default group would not
> be tied into a numeric value for existing sites, and so that it
> could be dynamically allocated, and just work.
> 
> I'm not too happy with having a value in /etc/group, but can see
> that it's necessary for new hosts. However, I also believe that
> functionality is provided by the "default-target" in
> basesrc/usr.sbin/user/Makefile.

        If I understand correctly that we would add
                'cd usr.sbin/user ; make default-group'
        to the end of the 'make distribution' target in etc/Makefile?

        While that target is a very flexible method of ensuring the
        'users' group could be added to any arbitrary group file, it
        does seem to make the process of finding out what /etc/group
        will contain from a source tree rather opaque.
 
> Why bother re-inventing wheels?

        I think I may be looking for more of a simple brick than a wheel :)     

                David/absolute
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