/start rant
Switching my servers from Annvix to Mandriva is absolutely maddening. The biggest problem is dynamic uid/gid mappings. Do you know how frustrating it is to have apache uid 77 on one machine and uid 92 on another? Or svn is gid 75 on one and gid 76 on another? It’s driving me absolutely bonkers.
Why on earth we switched, years ago, from static uid/gid mapping to dynamic mapping is beyond me. It’s the most utterly retarded thing possible. Consistency between different installs is not a bad thing people! Sure, the original argument was “it keeps the passwd file smaller” but… news flash! It’s easy to specify the uid or gid in the spec file and it’s trivial to keep a publicly-accessible list of the map so people don’t grab inappropriate uid or gid numbers. I mean, seriously… I implemented that in Annvix over 4 years ago! It was one of the first things I did.
Of course, mention this and developers/maintainers poo-poo the idea (no, that’s not theoretical… after I did it Annvix I proposed it again and… gasp… it was poo-poo’d… like usual).
Gaaaahhh! If I had a brick wall handy I’d be smashing my head in it at the moment.
/end rant