More systemd-struction

Micronaut · 2020-05-04 03:00:26

W. T. A. F..... Is this yet another "improvement" that the developers of other distros who have not fallen in line with Red hat will have to work around?

https://linux.slashdot.org/story/20/05/ … management

Camel Pilot (Slashdot reader #78,781) writes:
Leannart Poettering is proposing homed to alter the way Linux systems handle user management. All user information will be placed in a cryptographically signed JSON record, such as username, group membership, and password hashes. The venerable /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow will be a thing of the past. One of the claimed advantages will be home directory portability.
"Because the /home directory will no longer depend on the trifecta of systemd, /etc/passwd, and /etc/shadow, users and admins will then be able to easily migrate directories within /home," writes Jack Wallen at TechRepublic. "Imagine being able to move your /home/USER (where USER is your username) directory to a portable flash drive and use it on any system that works with systemd-homed. You could easily transport your /home/USER directory between home and work, or between systems within your company."
What is not clear is that for portability, systems would have to have identical user_id, group names, group_id, etc. And what mechanism is going to provide user authorization to login to a system?
"At the moment, systemd 245 is still in RC2 status," the article notes, adding "The good news, however, is that systemd 245 should be released sometime this year (2020).
"When that happens, prepare to change the way you manage users and their home directories."

Why can't we just cut Red Hat loose to manage their very own Red Hat OS under Poettering?

Last edited by Micronaut (2020-05-04 03:03:03)

bgstack15 · 2020-05-04 14:19:50

Moving contents from home to work: seems like a security risk to me!
Move home directories from one system to another? You mean like an nfs automount? Especially if you already have to have same uid and gid. But who actually cares about same username and group name? That's not a technical requirement for file permissions. Is that a limitation of systemd?

And so are these systems going to be pre-configured to read external media for these json files? Who is going to pre-load the signing certs into the systems? What's even the point....

Micronaut · 2020-05-04 19:23:32

Yeah, the comments on Slashdot raise some of these strange issues. Groups are part of the whole system config, so how do you move group settings around between systems? It looks like what they are trying to do is duplicate Windows-style domain logins. If that's what they want to do it's much more complex than Poettering has realized. There is a reason the trillion-dollar Microsoft has done this and no one else has...

Head_on_a_Stick · 2020-05-04 20:44:38

I'm not going to engage in any debate on this issue but I'd just like to point out how monumentally ill-informed that TechRepublic article is — the author claims that v245 of systemd is still in RC status but it was in fact released two months ago: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/releases/tag/v245

See also https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd-homed (and note that it has to be enabled and configured, it's not a default).

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#1 2020-05-04 03:00:26

More systemd-struction

#2 2020-05-04 14:19:50

Re: More systemd-struction

#3 2020-05-04 19:23:32

Re: More systemd-struction

#4 2020-05-04 20:44:38

Re: More systemd-struction

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