Re: NetBSD and User Private Groups (Unique Groups)

[Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>]

On Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 11:29:54AM +0000, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
> 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?

Note that it's also readable by others (with umask 022, the files are
created rw-r--r--), so changing the group won't help.

-- 
Manuel Bouyer <bouyer%antioche.eu.org@localhost>
     NetBSD: 26 ans d'experience feront toujours la difference
--