MacPorts is hijacking account on MacOSXServer

[Rainer Müller]

On 2011-07-25 21:44 , Rodolfo Aramayo wrote:
> The latest installation of MacPorts is taking over mobile accounts on
> MacOSXServer

AFAIK mobile account means they have a home exported over the network?
I am not sure if it is NIS/yp, but is this a similar solution?

> Obviously the installer does not determine the presence of 'mobile'
> accounts and finds the next available UniqueID number available and
> assigns it to the 'macports:staff'

The same method has been used for years now to create new system users
for Portfiles. So if you installed anything which required a new user,
you would have run into this problem before, for example the messagebus
user for dbus, polkituser for policykit or mysql for mysql4/mysql5.

If this method is really a problem, you already that before 2.0.0.

> The problem this creates is obvious, mobile users using that
> particular UniqueID lose control over their directories and files
> 
> While the problem can be easily fixed by reverting the usernames to
> their old ones, it is not clear to me what implications this will have
> on the macports user. Please advice here
> 
> Also I do not understand why the '/opt' directory is not now owned by
> the 'macports:staff' user

As Ryan pointed out, it's /opt/local.

Why should it be owned by macports:staff?

The macports user is being used to drop privileges while building. It is
not meant to own any files on your system as that would defeat its purpose.

Rainer