[Feature Request] Consider a more standard approach to removing the first setup user.

[Maxwelldoug]

Currently, the script remove-first-setup-user includes the following snippet

systemctl restart accounts-daemon.service
cp /usr/share/org.vanillaos.FirstSetup/remove-first-setup-user.service /etc/systemd/system/remove-first-setup-user.service
systemctl enable remove-first-setup-user.service

Ignoring the fact that this only actually works after a reboot and should include a systemd daemon-reload to properly load the new service before enabling it, POSIX standard suggests that we should instead use usermod --expiredate 1 vanilla to immediately prevent any use of the account. We could also simply consider userdel -rf vanilla which would completely remove the user, regardless of if they are currently logged in, which will return an error, but it will work.

We do need to stop to consider why I make this suggestion - besides what is "proper", this causes issues with sddm, where an explicit exclusion is needed for the vanilla user's login, and in greetd, where there is no simple way to implement this exclusion, causing them to appear (as the default) even after first setup has been finished. This particular issue could also be solved by simply forcing a reboot after first setup runs, but properly removing the user would be better.

[taukakao]

We don't need to reload systemd since it will only run the service on reboot anyway.

Expiring the user makes sense I guess, even just for security reasons, since the first setup user has some privileges like creating a new user or changing the system language.

I'm strongly against deleting a logged in user.
The manpage of userdel states:

Note: This option is dangerous and may leave your system in an inconsistent state.

And I generally see a lot of problems that could arise because of this. (For example, will ending the session always work even if the user doesn't exist or will it break randomly if something in the system changes?)

[Maxwelldoug]

Agreed, that's why I proposed it as an alternative and not a solution. Expiring the user has the additional benefit of being able to re-enable it to create additional users with proper first setup later, though we would have to provide a check to prevent changing the hostname on subsequent users and not give them sudo.

[taukakao]

I think we should delete the user nontheless.
Re-creating is about as easy as re-enabling it.
Removing it creates a cleaner system.

I don't really see the benefit of running the configure system mode again tho, unless for a complete reset.