[jira] [Commented] (CASSANDRA-3443) rpm should not remove user on uninstall

["Jonathan Ellis (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-3443?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13563127#comment-13563127 ] 

Jonathan Ellis commented on CASSANDRA-3443:
-------------------------------------------

(removed mostly-unmaintained rpm spec from tree a while ago.)
                
> rpm should not remove user on uninstall
> ---------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: CASSANDRA-3443
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CASSANDRA-3443
>             Project: Cassandra
>          Issue Type: Bug
>          Components: Packaging
>            Reporter: Mark Doliner
>            Priority: Minor
>              Labels: account, rpm, spec, user
>         Attachments: dont_remove_user_on_rpm_uninstall.diff
>
>
> Fedora's packaging guidelines state, "We never remove users or groups created by packages. There's no sane way to check if files owned by those users/groups are left behind (and even if there would, what would we do to them?), and leaving those behind with ownerships pointing to now nonexistent users/groups may result in security issues when a semantically unrelated user/group is created later and reuses the UID/GID. Also, in some setups deleting the user/group might not be possible or/nor desirable (eg. when using a shared remote user/group database). Cleanup of unused users/groups is left to the system administrators to take care of if they so desire." (that's from http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Packaging/UsersAndGroups)
> However, Cassandra's spec file in trunk and all branches contains this:
> {noformat}
> %preun
> # only delete user on removal, not upgrade
> if [ "$1" = "0" ]; then
>     userdel %{username}
> fi
> {noformat}
> I agree with Fedora's reasoning.  Additionally I'd like to add that stray accounts on a system are generally relatively harmless.  I wonder if there was some intentional decision to diverge from Fedora's (and presumably Red Hat's) customary behavior?  If not, I would suggest removing the above scriptlet from the Cassandra spec file.  I'd be happy to provide a diff if that would be useful.

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