Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v2 0/2] qga: guest-set-user-password - added ability to create new user

[Yuriy Pudgorodskiy <yur@virtuozzo.com>]

On 1/14/2016 5:46 PM, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 05:22:39PM +0300, Denis V. Lunev wrote:
>> On 01/14/2016 05:18 PM, Marc-André Lureau wrote:
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 1:01 PM, Denis V. Lunev <den@openvz.org> wrote:
>>>> These patches add optional 'create' flag to guest-set-user-password command.
>>>> When it is specified, a new user will be created if it does not
>>>> exist yet.
>>>>
>>> What's the motivation to re-use set-password instead of a new command?
>> because we will have to change the password later on after addition
>> of such user. Also this looks better for a case "create if not exists" and
>> force new password.
> I don't think that's very compelling honestly. In addition when creating
> user accounts there's a whole bunch more parameters you potentially want
> to set besides just the username - see how many options exist with the
> 'useradd' command. Also with some users you might not want to set any
> password. So if we want to create users via QGA, I think that having a
> separate command makes more sense.
>
> Regards,
> Daniel
There is a problem with a whole bunch of create user parameters  - they 
are platform
specific. Windows and Unix 'create user' API are rather different - 
developing support for
all parameters will probably lead to two commands - 'create_user_posix' 
and 'create_user_windows'.

If so, callers that want full control over user creation may call 
platform specific commands
over generic guest-exec - e.g. 'useradd' with many options and 'net 
user', 'net localgroup',
respectively.

We, in contradiction to such callers, want to add simpler 
platform-independent functionality
much like the os installers provides during initial setup  - e.g. just 
username and password
with other parameters be a reasonable default.

If that sounds logical to you - we may talk about reasons for defaults 
and extends to a minimal
parameter set (user plus password).

But creating a full separate 'user add' command when it is platform 
specific and user has ability
to call 'useradd' via exec - sounds like an overkill to me.