(debian-policy.info)Introduction

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9.2.1 Introduction
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The Debian system can be configured to use either plain or shadow
passwords.

Some user ids (UIDs) and group ids (GIDs) are reserved globally for use
by certain packages.  Because some packages need to include files which
are owned by these users or groups, or need the ids compiled into
binaries, these ids must be used on any Debian system only for the
purpose for which they are allocated.  This is a serious restriction,
and we should avoid getting in the way of local administration policies.
In particular, many sites allocate users and/or local system groups
starting at 100.

Apart from this we should have dynamically allocated ids, which should
by default be arranged in some sensible order, but the behavior should
be configurable.

Packages other than ‘base-passwd’ must not modify ‘/etc/passwd’,
‘/etc/shadow’, ‘/etc/group’ or ‘/etc/gshadow’.