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Re: NetBSD and User Private Groups (Unique Groups)



On 29/01/2020 10:02, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 09:36:02AM +0000, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
Hi,

I'm using 9.0_RC1, so I don't know if this is a functionality that was used
in the past and then dropped or will be introduced in the future.

At one point in time, probably around 10+ years ago, Red Hat introduced User
Private Groups [1]. I ignore if other OSes have had this feature before
(probably Mac OSX ?). Anyway, this has then spread to all other major Linux
distros. FreeBSD calls them "unique groups" [2]. OpenBSD has this line in
/etc/usermgmt.conf:

group           =uid

I never understood how this would be usefull


[I forgot to cc: the list. Manuel, sorry for the duplicate]

I wonder how this can possibly _not_ be useful.

On a multi user system, all files are created readable by the group (umask 022). If we are all in the same group, anybody can read my newly created files (imagine a local password file for alpine or ssl certs for irc, etc). It's then left to the user to change umask and/or adjust permissions. Why not just make it easier for the user?

--
Ottavio Caruso



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