Re: LSB specification for adding users and groups

[Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu>]

Wichert Akkerman <wichert@cs.leidenuniv.nl> writes:

> Previously Rob Browning wrote:
> > While we're at it, could we consider adding options to usermod to
> > support adding and removing a user to/from a set of groups?
> 
> May I suggest this:
> 	adduser <user> <new group>

Sorry it took me so long to get back to this.

If you look carefully at my post, you'll see what the problem with
this is that since useradd uses usermod as it's underlying mechanism,
there's still a nasty race condition (AFAIKT) where you could have
lost updates.  What' I'm arguing for is an interface to the
password/group database that allows you to avoid this problem.
Whether it's a locking protocol, or preferably, an alternate API, I'd
be happy.

-- 
Rob Browning <rlb@cs.utexas.edu> PGP=E80E0D04F521A094 532B97F5D64E3930