Re: [Savannah-help-public] mcasadevall user?

[Jim Meyering]

Sylvain Beucler <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2007 at 12:32:01PM +0200, Jim Meyering wrote:
>> I noticed what looks like a regular user (mcasadevall) in /etc/passwd.
>> Is this deliberate?  ISTR it's against policy.

Hi Sylvain!
>
> Michael asked to create a user account because he didn't want to
> always work as root. Why not. What I'm against is enforcing the use of
> sudo, because it's cumbersome to type a password at each and every
> login.

Not only that, IMHO, it's best not to type a password on a WAN
connection, even if it's tunneled through ssh.

> (Btw what policy are you mentioning?)

I thought I requested something similar, but heard that it wasn't
an option.  I too dislike working as root.  Case in point: my current
cvs-to-git project.  So I may be creating one for myself, too.

> I forgot to mention that Michael has root access since a couple
> days. It was said on the IRC channel but sometimes I forget not
> everybody is here :/ Michael plans to improve SVN support, especially
> because he needs it for a GNU Hurd-related project right now (after
> not managing to agree about choosing git or bazaar or else ;)).

Michael, you should have asked me.
I would have convinced you to use git :)

>> Also, I scp'd files to address@hidden:
>> and see them show up with this same ownership:
>>
>>   address@hidden ls -l /var/tmp/c2g-mirror/
>>   total 16
>>   drwxr-xr-x 2 nobody      nogroup     4096 Aug 10 06:22 .map/
>>   -rw-r--r-- 1 mcasadevall mcasadevall 7895 May  5 09:03 emacs
>>   -rw-r--r-- 1 mcasadevall mcasadevall 1019 Jul 25 17:46 gnulib
>>
>> I would have expected them to be owned by root.
>> Anyone know why?  Should we worry, or do something differently?
>>
>>   $ ssh -l root sv.gnu.org id -a
>>   uid=0(root) gid=0(root) groups=0(root)
>
> I guess that scp tries to preserve the ownership of the files you send
> - and I guess your local user id is #1000, just like mcasadevall.

Eww... sounds right.
I'll either stop using scp, or find a way to disable that option.

> Since we'll probably make the mistake more often then once, it would
> be good to remap mcasadevall to #5000 or something, unless somebody
> has a cleaner solution :)