Packaging/Users And Groups

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Users and groups

Creating users and groups during package install is one of the major parts for packages containing daemons. If you package contains a daemon, consider creating a special user/group running this daemon to improve security.

Creating group during package install =

Requires(Pre): pwdutils
%define        daemon_group bar
Provides:      group(%{daemon_group})
...
%pre
# create daemon group, if not existing
if
    getent group %{daemon_group} >/dev/null
then
    : OK group %{daemon_group} already present
else
    groupadd -r %{daemon_group}  2>/dev/null || :
fi

Creating user during package install

Please note that this example uses a special group that was created before via the snipplet above.

Users should get a home directory with at least read access. Sometimes it makes also sense to use a directory that is writable by the daemon user. This makes debugging easier (think about a "su - $daemon_user").

Requires(Pre): pwdutils
%define        daemon_user foo
Provides:      user(%{daemon_user})
...
%pre
# create daemon user, if not existing
if
    getent passwd %{daemon_user} >/dev/null
then
    : OK user %{daemon_user} already present
else
    useradd  -r -o -g %{daemon_group} -s /bin/false -c "FOO daemon" -d %{_var}/lib/%{name} %{daemon_user} 2> /dev/null || :
fi

List of already used users and groups

A list of currently allowed users and groups in openSUSE Factory can be found inside the "config" file of the package rpmlint.