[gentoo-dev] Possibly trim sys-libs/pwdb from default profiles?

[gentoo-dev] Possibly trim sys-libs/pwdb from default profiles?

[Donny Davies]

  Devs,

  According to what I've gathered, this library is going the
way of the dodo bird.  The only package in the portage tree
that thinks it needs this library, is Linux-PAM (sys-libs/pam).

  The only pieces of PAM that require this library appear to
be pam_radius.so and pam_pwdb.so.  All of Gentoo's pam.d/config
files are presently (or should be) using pam_unix.so, where in
the past pam_pwdb.so might have been interchangable.  The radius
module sounds like a good fit for "optional build-time support"
to me.  Also, I wonder whether or not the pam_radius.so could
be ported/patched to use whatever pam_unix.so uses, as it
doesnt need this library and I think the two provide similar
functionality/support anyways.

  Add to this, apparently RedHat now calls this package
pwdb-compat, implying that its going to be soon legacy code.
Some distributions might still be using pam_pwdb.so in their
pam.d/configs but I don't think it's really common much
anymore.

  So what's the point?  Well, if we are into it, I suppose
that sys-libs/pwdb could be made into a USE pwdb inside the
sys-libs/pam package, thereby facilitating all of the default
profiles to trim out sys-libs/pwdb that is installed by default
on every Gentoo Linux system.

  I'm not totally bent on doing this immediately or anything.
There might be some squeakies with *possibly* a very old
Gentoo Linux system which *is* using pam_pwdb.so in it's
pam.d/configs somewhere, which in theory could lead to them
getting "locked out" by installing a sys-libs/pam without
USE=pwdb.  Thus I ask for your comments/concerns please;
Azarah does this sound pretty much like an OK idea to
pursue?

                Donny

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list