[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#416835: /usr/sbin/useradd: contrary to documentation, useradd creates per-user groups

[river at hemlock.knams.wikimedia.org]

Package: passwd
Version: 1:4.0.18.1-7
Severity: normal
File: /usr/sbin/useradd

according to /etc/default/useradd, useradd(8) is not capable of creating
per-user groups.  its manual page does not mention that it can or will
do so.  the manual page also says that when no group is specified, the
default group is "1".  despite this, when useradd is invoked without -g,
per-user groups are created:

127/root at hemlock:~>id testuser
id: testuser: No such user
1/root at hemlock:~>grep testuser /etc/group
1/root at hemlock:~>useradd testuser
0/root at hemlock:~>id testuser
uid=1144(testuser) gid=1144(testuser) groups=1144(testuser)
0/root at hemlock:~>grep testuser /etc/group
testuser:x:1144:
0/root at hemlock:~>

"useradd -g users" will correctly add the user to the "users" group and
not create a per-user group. 

either useradd should be changed to not create per-user groups, or the
documentation should be updated to say that it will do so.  (the former
behaviour seems to make more sense, it's very unexpected that a
low-level utility like useradd will do such things.)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.20.4-hemlock6-twincest
Locale: LANG=en_US.ISO-8859-15, LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-15 (charmap=ISO-8859-15)

Versions of packages passwd depends on:
ii  debianutils                 2.17         Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii  libc6                       2.3.6.ds1-13 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libpam-modules              0.79-4       Pluggable Authentication Modules f
ii  libpam0g                    0.79-4       Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libselinux1                 1.32-3       SELinux shared libraries
ii  login                       1:4.0.18.1-7 system login tools

passwd recommends no packages.

-- debconf information:
  passwd/password-mismatch:
  passwd/username:
  passwd/password-empty:
  passwd/make-user: true
  passwd/title:
  passwd/user-uid:
  passwd/shadow: true
  passwd/username-bad:
  passwd/user-fullname: