On Sat, 31 Jul 2010 13:54:56 +0200, Yves Goergen
<nospam.list@???> wrote:
>Sending myself a message fails (it won't be delivered) and the exim
>mainlog says it doesn't have access to that maildir. The exim process is
>running as user "118" (which is "Debian-exim" when I look it up myself,
>ps can't display the name for some unknown reason).
It's ps's documented behavior to display the numeric UID in the case
that the alphanumeric user name is too long for the table layout.
http://wiki.debian.org/PkgExim4UserFAQ#Whydoes.22ps.22displayExim.27saccountnameonlyasanumber.3F
>Is there a way to
>change that username so that it uses "mail" again?
Sure. You would be able to figure that our by yourself if you knew
more about Unix and E-Mail. Unless you have that knowledge, I strongly
encourage you to leave things as the experts who have prepared your
package chose to.
>What's so special about that username that ps won't show it but only its
>number instead?
It's long.
http://wiki.debian.org/PkgExim4UserFAQ#Whydoes.22ps.22displayExim.27saccountnameonlyasanumber.3F
>Anyway, there's generic system users for anything, why does this one
>need to name the (based-upon) Linux distribution AND the product name?
This is explained in the documentation that came with your package and
which is mirrored on the web in
http://wiki.debian.org/PkgExim4UserFAQ#TheusernameDebian-.24PACKAGEistoolong.3Aitmisalignslsoutputandistruncatedbypsandatop.Andit.27sugly.21
>For a use that is shared among different products, like SMTP, IMAP etc.
>I really think that "mail" would have been a better choice.
You can probably explain why you think that this would be a better
choice.
> Or maybe
>there's an unknown reason behind that, too?
Of course. One of the reasons is that the Debian maintainers wanted to
minimize the amount of coordination which would be necessary with
other package's maintainers during the development process. It's
complex enough already.
Greetings
Marc
--
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