Nils Gillmann writes: > can someone tell me why in gnu/system/shadow module you thought > it would be a good idea to default to "users" as a shared group > for all accounts created as normal user profiles? > > Reason why I'm asking has a second question attached: > Why does our opensmtpd-service (and dovecot?) create > /var/mail world readable, owned by root:root? Does the opensmtpd-service allow a user to customize in their declaration the permissions it will use for /var/mail? If it does, then you should be able to specify precisely the permissions you want on /var/mail. > I'm working on integration of mailx (package done, debugging its > runtime currently[1]), though I think my concern is not exclusive to > mailx: I want users to be able to read mailboxes inside /var/mail > by their name (/var/mail/$username) and which are set to be r+w > only for $username:$username. If you want to list the content of > the folder you would need to be part of the wheel/sudo group, > otherwise you are just able to access your mailbox with your > mailreader. > $username:$username was what I learned as good and secure usage > for user accounts. Why GuixSD uses $username:users is beyond me. > I know recently the default chmod of the user $home was changed > (last year?) so I can no longer read other users homes, but I'm > still questioning the choice. > Some explanation on this would be good. In defense of the current default, my understanding is that in shared systems, it is not uncommon to put users in a single group (e.g., users). I suppose the intent might be to make it easier for the users to collaborate in such shared systems. So, I didn't find this behavior very surprising. However, if you want to change the user/group structure, you ought to be able to do so. I believe you can do that by customizing the "users" and "groups" fields of your declaration (see: (guix) operating-system Reference). You even should to be able to remove the "users" group entirely if you don't want it. Hope that helps! -- Chris