Message-Id: <m11naQz-000SEwC@nolfolan.idiomtech.com>
From: Andrew Pimlott <pimlott@idiomtech.com>
To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit@bugs.debian.org>
Subject: www-data considered harmful
Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 23:41:37 -0500
Bcc:

Package: base-passwd
Version: 2.1.2
Severity: wishlist

The www-data user and group should die.  The hyphen is a gratuitous source
of grief.

One example is the config script for smail (bug 41240, still unfixed).  It
populates /etc/aliases from /etc/passwd, but misses www-data because it
doesnt't expect a -.  Go look at your /etc/aliases file if you use smail.
exim inherited the config script and the bug, but it has been fixed there
(bug expired).

Another example (from memory) is postgresql.  Some escaping was necessary to
get postgresql to recognize www-data as a user, because of the hyphen.  I
believe there was a bug that has expired.  There are mailing list posts on
the topic, eg the thread containing
http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-devel-9905/msg00223.html .

I understand that there may be challenges to changing an established
user/groups, but www-data is tastless and should be changed.  wwwdata would
be fine.  In addition, a convention should be establish somewhere, such as
policy, that users and groups created by packages must have lowercase
alphabetic names.

Andrew

-- System Information
Debian Release: potato
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux nolfolan 2.2.12 #1 Fri Aug 27 16:19:56 EDT 1999 i686

Versions of packages base-passwd depends on:
ii  libc6                         2.1.2-10   GNU C Library: Shared libraries an