Bug#293492: [Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#293492: useradd: by default creates user with unspecified shell, this causes problems

[Daniel Kabs]

Am Saturday, 17. September 2005 08:07 schrieb Christian Perrier:
> useradd is, as we often said, a lower level utility, so on Debian is
> is aimed to be used as a very generic way to add users. Being generic,
> it should rather default to a generic shell.

I usually create a new user with useradd and expected useradd to set the 
"command interpreter field" to a valid value in terms of /etc/shells.

I think, "/bin/sh" is generic :-)

If you've got an account with an empty shell value, login is rejected if you 
enable pam_shells.so. So what is the advantage of not setting a shell at all?

> Anyway, if ones feels there is a bug, it rather pertains to
> adduser. I'm deeply against using DSHELL=/bin/bash in
> /etc/default/useradd

Me too! :-) I guess, this should either read 

DSHELL in /etc/adduser.conf 

or

SHELL in /etc/default/useradd


I'd really like you to supply /etc/default/useradd with the SHELL field 
uncommented: SHELL=/bin/sh


Here are my 2 ¢ (from a Debian user with a SuSE background):

I've always disliked the idea of having both useradd and adduser. I once had a 
Linux system running, where adduser was soft linked to useradd. Then I 
installed SuSE, which got rid of adduser. That was great because I could just 
type user and press tab to see all possible shell commands pertaining to user 
administration. Now with Debian, I can not do this but have to consult the 
man page first.

Cheers
Daniel