probably not a huge deal, but bigger implications

Posted Jun 24, 2025 7:16 UTC (Tue) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118)
In reply to: probably not a huge deal, but bigger implications by wtarreau
Parent article: GNOME deepens systemd dependencies

I vaguely remember some distributions dropping /etc/passwd. The replacement was a directory tree somewhere in /etc, each user-representing directory owned by that user. Inside were files for metadata like real name, a symlink to the shell etc.

I can't find it now, but Openwall's TCB (https://www.openwall.com/tcb/) looks similar. Or maybe that was something from GoboLinux? Or maybe T2 SDE? Nevertheless, life without /etc/{passwd,shadow} is possible and even quite pleasant.

probably not a huge deal, but bigger implications

Posted Jun 24, 2025 10:01 UTC (Tue) by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590) [Link]

It was ALT Linux probably, it uses TCB.

probably not a huge deal, but bigger implications

Posted Jun 24, 2025 18:15 UTC (Tue) by adobriyan (subscriber, #30858) [Link]

This is likely to make updates non-atomic.