Ubuntu
gnome-system-tools package

group manager should hide system groups

Bug #88259 reported by Sebastian Urban
4
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
gnome-system-tools (Ubuntu)
Won't Fix
Low
Ubuntu Desktop Bugs

Bug Description

Binary package hint: gnome-system-tools

by default the gnome user and group administrator shows system groups. this should be disabled, because users without UNIX knowledge have no idea what they mean and could delete them.

Feisty Fawn - Herd 4

ProblemType: Bug
Date: Tue Feb 27 04:16:29 2007
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.04
Uname: Linux surban-desktop 2.6.20-8-generic #2 SMP Tue Feb 13 05:18:42 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

Thank you for your bug

Changed in gnome-system-tools:
assignee: nobody → desktop-bugs
importance: Undecided → Low
status: Unconfirmed → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Brian Murray (brian-murray) wrote :

Groups with a GID of 99 or less are hidden by users-admin by default. Are those the system groups you were thinking of or did you mean GIDs less than 1001?

Changed in gnome-system-tools:
status: Confirmed → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Sebastian Urban (surban) wrote :

I mean GIDs less than 1001.

On my system the following groups are shown:
root
users
dhcp
syslog
klog
scanner
nvram
fuse
ssl-cert
lpadmin
messagebus
admin
crontab
ssh
avahi-autoipd
avahi
netdev
haldaemon
powerdev
gdm
slocate
vboxusers
debian-tor
mythtv

I guess it is okay to show some of them with a description what they are for and allow an admin to change who belongs to the group. However it should not be possible to delete system groups or change the GID, because daemons depend on them.

Sebastian Urban (surban)
Changed in gnome-system-tools:
status: Incomplete → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan) wrote :

I disagree. We wont change this because hiding system groups would make the groups dialog completely useless. Users have nice ways of tweaking privileges, but those who go to the groups dialog must know what they are doing.

Changed in gnome-system-tools (Ubuntu):
milestone: later → none
status: Confirmed → Won't Fix
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