Re: [musl] Plans to remove nscd in Fedora

[Rich Felker <dalias@libc.org>]

On Mon, Nov 02, 2020 at 02:54:31PM +0100, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Rich Felker:
> 
> > It's not mandatory on glibc, but it's a widely deployed existing
> > interface on most "big" systems, and it's easy to add with a quick
> > apt-get or whatever on others if you find you need it for integration
> > with non-glibc binaries.
> 
> This has not been true for quite a few years because using nscd along
> with sssd for the same databases is not supported (sssd is where all the
> domain integration work happens these days):
> 
> <https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/7/html/system-level_authentication_guide/usingnscd-sssd>
> 
> SUSE also recommends disabling parts of nscd:
> 
> | -  Modify  /etc/nscd.conf
> | 
> | enable-cache   passwd    no
> | enable-cache   group      no
> 
> <https://www.suse.com/support/kb/doc/?id=000019039>
> 
> I think SUSE has largely switched to SSSD as well for the most recent
> product releases, but I do not have much insight into their work
> unfortunately.
> 
> > If it remains easy to add, having it not installed by default is
> > really not a big deal,
> 
> (we have been in this situation for many, many years)
> 
> > but I kinda worry about bitrot/breakage from suddenly having far fewer
> > users.
> 
> nscd is already very broken and has issues with workloads that trigger
> many cache misses.

Thanks for filling me in on the status of this. Perhaps
https://github.com/pikhq/musl-nscd (not part of musl, but by a
long-time contributor) would be a useful basis for building a
replacement glibc systems could use too?

Rich