[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#1086225: please consider giving a dedicated exit value for "invalid user name"

[Marc Haber]

Package: passwd
Version: 1:4.16.0-4
Severity: wishlist
File: /usr/sbin/useradd
Tags: upstream

Hi,

recently, useradd has grown funcitonality to check user names for
validity, see #1074306. This kind of clashes with adduser doing the same
thing, and has made testing adduser a bit harder. But still, the efforts
of staying sane upsetream-wise and close to upstream Debian-wise are
appreciated.

I would like to have adduser give more clear error messages like "the
user name is fine with adduser but useradd doesnt like it", and that
would be way easier if useradd's error message "invaid user name" woud
be backed with an appropriate, exclusive exit code.

I understand that this is unlikely to show up in useradd next week, so I
will be tweaking adduser's tests to handle those failures more
graefully, but I have just commented the tests so that we can re-enable
them once there is a more reliable method to detect this kind of useradd
error programatically. Please keep this bug report posted about your and
upstream's decisions.

Greetings
Marc


-- System Information:
Debian Release: trixie/sid
  APT prefers stable-security
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 6.11.4-amd64 (SMP w/12 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages passwd depends on:
ii  base-passwd     3.6.5
ii  libacl1         2.3.2-2
ii  libattr1        1:2.5.2-2
ii  libaudit1       1:4.0.1-1
ii  libbsd0         0.12.2-2
ii  libc6           2.40-3
ii  libcrypt1       1:4.4.36-5
ii  libpam-modules  1.5.3-7
ii  libpam0g        1.5.3-7
ii  libselinux1     3.7-3
ii  libsemanage2    3.7-2
ii  login.defs      1:4.16.0-4

Versions of packages passwd recommends:
ii  sensible-utils  0.0.24

passwd suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information