From: John W Higgins <wishdev@...>
Date: 2010-11-19T02:32:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Calling a bash script creates files as UID 501 ?

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Good Morning,

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 4:57 AM, Dreamcat Four <dreamcat4@gmail.com> wrote:

> Just also to mention that -
>
> The OS is ubuntu 10.10 Maverick, and the ruby version is
>
> ruby 1.8.7 (2010-06-23 patchlevel 299) [i686-linux]
>
> (`aptitude install -y ruby`)
>
>
> I expect this to be a bug in Ruby. Because theres no username associated
> with the UID 501:
>

First, I love how you jump to the conclusion that it's a Ruby bug even
though you are using a second generation install script that has nothing to
do with Ruby. It's all fine and great to use helper scripts to organize the
installation of something but a flaw in the script does not equal a flaw in
the tool being installed.

There is no requirement that an actual user be associated with an id for the
id to own an object. That's sort of why you see 501 as the user as opposed
to the user name. It appears that the script is using the concept of group
ownership as the controlling factor as opposed to worrying about the user id
of the file owners. In other words once the tarball is opened up they are
changing the group owner of the files to something it knows exists but not
worrying about the user id. You could easily run chown -R "whatever user you
choose" /usr/local/rvm and you would then not see the 501 user.

Or you could patch your install script and contribute it back.

It does appear that the tarball maybe comes from OSX where 501 is a well
known user id and therefore normally exists. I have CentOS boxes that appear
to start at 501 and Gentoo boxes that appear to start at 1001 so it's just
an oversight in the install script you are looking at but it's not something
I would loose sleep over - and if you are inclined to do so then just run
the chown command above.

John

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