NixOS also deals with that

Posted Apr 24, 2025 6:44 UTC (Thu) by spacefrogg (subscriber, #119608)
Parent article: Addressing UID/GID drift in rpm-ostree and bootc

Being an image-based distribution in that particular regard, NixOS also has to take care of UID drift. There, the OS maintains a passwd/groups database in /var, such that a UID/GID once created is not changed later in a particular installation, even if the configuration demands it. On each system update the admin gets notified about the UID/GID mismatch such that they can clean up.

NixOS also deals with that

Posted Apr 24, 2025 13:50 UTC (Thu) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link] (1 responses)

> On each system update the admin gets notified about the UID/GID mismatch such that they can clean up.

This is not a viable approach for a general-purpose distribution like Fedora Linux.

NixOS also deals with that

Posted Apr 25, 2025 5:47 UTC (Fri) by rgb (guest, #57129) [Link]

But this UID/GID mismatch is exactly what you want? It is just a missmatch between the current system and the package spec. There are only two options (if you don't want to re-assign every file in /home etc):

1) spec matches /usr; missmatch between /usr and /home
2) /usr matches /home; missmatch between /usr and spec

NixOS also deals with that

Posted Apr 25, 2025 5:29 UTC (Fri) by rgb (guest, #57129) [Link]

> even if the configuration demands it

Do you have an example when this might happen? I can only think of a package that switches from dynamic to static user/group creation on update, but that should be very rare?