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docs: Elaborate a bit on sysusers and /usr #1457

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docs: Elaborate a bit on sysusers and /usr
cgwalters Jul 29, 2025
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Update docs/src/building/users-and-groups.md
cgwalters Jul 29, 2025
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7 changes: 7 additions & 0 deletions docs/src/building/users-and-groups.md
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Expand Up @@ -95,6 +95,13 @@ of at build time. If `/etc` is persistent, this can avoid uid/gid drift (but
in the general case it does mean that uid/gid allocation can
depend on how a specific machine was upgraded over time).

Note that the default `sysusers` design is that users are allocated on the client
side (per machine). Avoid having non-root owned files managed by `sysusers`
inside your image, especially underneath `/usr`. With the exception of
`setuid` or `setgid` binaries (which should also be strongly avoided), there is
generally no valid reason for having non-root owned files in `/usr` or other
runtime-immutable directories.

#### User and group home directories and `/var`

For systems configured with persistent `/home` → `/var/home`, any changes to `/var` made
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