[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#480784: passwd: You can only use the -b or --base-dir option when supplying -D

[Glen B]

Package: passwd
Version: 1:4.0.18.1-7
Severity: important
Tags: patch



-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-5-k7
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages passwd depends on:
ii  debianutils            2.17              Miscellaneous utilities
specific t
ii  libc6                  2.3.6.ds1-13etch5 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libpam-modules         0.79-5            Pluggable Authentication
Modules f
ii  libpam0g               0.79-5            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: glen
  passwd/password-empty:
  passwd/make-user: true
  passwd/title:
  passwd/user-uid:
  passwd/shadow: true
  passwd/username-bad:
  passwd/user-fullname:



*****************************************************

Remove or comment lines 1029 and 1030 from useradd.c to remove the -D
flag check.

If this is "feature" and not a "bug" in useradd on Debian then -b
should be documented to match the functionality of the code. That is, -b
should then be documented to state that -D must be specified in conjunction
with -b to set a new default base directory. Based on that, -b can never
be used to temporarily set the base directory in conjunction with -m.