[asterisk-users] Standard UIDs, especially for asterisk?

[Gordon Henderson]

On Tue, 15 Nov 2011, Tony Mountifield wrote:

> In article <4EC296B9.8040506 at digium.com>,
> Jason Parker <jparker at digium.com> wrote:
>> On 11/15/2011 10:42 AM, Tony Mountifield wrote:
>>> Yes, I was hoping to use such a system user and group for asterisk, which
>>> would not conflict with any other system package I might install in the
>>> future, by virtue of being reserved for asterisk.
>>>
>>
>> There shouldn't be any conflict either way.  (Properly written) packages don't
>> specify a UID to use - they just get created sequentially, so the next available
>> ID is used.
>
> If that were the case, I would expect different installations of the
> same distro (with varying package selections) to have different values
> for UIDs of specific system users.  But examination of several different
> RH-based systems from FC1 through to CentOS 6 shows the same values
> being used.  I would be reluctant to label all such packages as
> improperly written :-)

I suspect the distros (well, Debian at least) have a standard 'skeleton' 
password file which they consider the minimum usable as part of the basic 
system, then packages added after the basic installation just get the next 
free number. Debian seems to install (for example) www-data (33 for as 
long as I can remember), games, man, lp, gnats, Debian-exim and a few 
others even when not using them at all!

So if you're building a distro, then create one yourself, or if a package 
then use whatever the underying OS uses to pick the next "system" one.

Gordon