[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#304398: chfn: does not work as documented in its man page.

[Jonay Gomez]

Package: passwd
Version: 20000902-12woody1

Program chfn does not work as documented in its man page.

The man page says any normal user can update, for his own user account,
the "fullname" part of the GCOS field.

That is not true in Debian-Woody for the chfn command and the "fullname"
part of any normal user account GCOS field. (I don't have Debian-Sarge
here but it is trivial to try whether this bug is there too or not.)

jgomez1@gran:~$ cat /etc/passwd | grep jgomez1
jgomez1:x:1000:1000:Jonay Gomez,,,:/home/jgomez1:/bin/bash
jgomez1@gran:~$ who am i
jgomez1  pts/7        Apr 12 22:15 (tecra:S.5)
jgomez1@gran:~$ chfn -f "Perico Palotes" jgomez1
chfn: Permission denied.
jgomez1@gran:~$

The man page for chfn has to say "A normal user may only change the fields
for their  own  account, except the fullname part", or else allow the
chfn command for any user to update his own fullname information for
his own account.

These are passwd package dependencies and their versions on this system:

ii  libc6                         2.2.5-11.8                    GNU C Libra=
ry: Shared libraries and Timezone data
ii  libpam0g                      0.72-35                       Pluggable A=
uthentication Modules library
ii  login                         20000902-12woody1             System logi=
n tools
ii  libpam-modules                0.72-35                       Pluggable A=
uthentication Modules for PAM
ii  passwd                        20000902-12woody1             Change and =
administer password and group data.


--=20
Jonay G=F3mez
jgomez@naleco.com