Let's optimize dynamic UID allocation a bit: if a StateDirectory= (or
suchlike) is configured, we start our allocation loop from that UID and
use it if it currently isn't used otherwise. This is beneficial as it
saves us from having to expensively recursively chown() these
directories in the typical case (which StateDirectory= does when it
notices that the owner of the directory doesn't match the UID picked).
With this in place we now have the a three-phase logic for allocating a
dynamic UID:
a) first, we try to use the owning UID of StateDirectory=,
CacheDirectory=, LogDirectory= if that exists and is currently
otherwise unused.
b) if that didn't work out, we hash the UID from the service name
c) if that didn't yield an unused UID either, randomly pick new ones
until we find a free one.
This adds a new boolean setting DynamicUser= to service files. If set, a new
user will be allocated dynamically when the unit is started, and released when
it is stopped. The user ID is allocated from the range 61184..65519. The user
will not be added to /etc/passwd (but an NSS module to be added later should
make it show up in getent passwd).
For now, care should be taken that the service writes no files to disk, since
this might result in files owned by UIDs that might get assigned dynamically to
a different service later on. Later patches will tighten sandboxing in order to
ensure that this cannot happen, except for a few selected directories.
A simple way to test this is:
systemd-run -p DynamicUser=1 /bin/sleep 99999