* Greg Murphy ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) spake thusly: > I recently switched from slackware to debian. Under slack, when users were > added they were defaultly added to the group "users". I see debian gives each > user his/her own group. > > 1. Why did debian adopt this method?
ISTR that it was discussed way back... Try searching old debian-devel archives maybe? Basically, Unix ugo permissions suck -- they were OK in 1975 when computers weren't fast enough to support better security mechanisms, but in 2002 they're simly not fine-grained enough. In slack (all users belong to us^W the same group), if your files are group-readable, every user can read them. In debian they can't, you have to add people to your group if you want them to read your files => more fine-grained control. The downside is that number of groups a user can belong to is limited (32 by default, IIRC), and with debian's tendency to have a separate group for everything (audio, ppp, cdrom, ...) it's very easy to run out. Dima -- We're sysadmins. Sanity happens to other people. -- Chris King
