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Re: Bits from the release team: the plans for etch



On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 08:54:18 +1000, Brian May <bam@debian.org> wrote:
>If the code "just" calls adduser, this would seem to be a bug, as
>adduser will exit with a warning if the user already exists (see
>#264570). (If I am mistaken here with the precise details it is
>because the man page has mislead me).

You are mistaken. adduser will print a warning that the user already
exists and then exit with a zero exit code, if the already existing
account conforms to the account attributes requested in the adduser
call.

>So either you have to redirect stderr to /dev/null (this could mask
>serious errors too), or just to make sure the user doesn't exist first
>(preferred IMHO).

You can also use adduser --quiet and get rid of the warnings.

>However, this has to be done carefully, or you end up doing the wrong
>thing. e.g. deluser -r $USER, in the past, has been pure evil if the
>home directory has been changed to "/"!

Deluser has a configuratble regexp and refuses to delete files
matching that regexp.

Greetings
Marc

-- 
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Marc Haber         |   " Questions are the         | Mailadresse im Header
Mannheim, Germany  |     Beginning of Wisdom "     | http://www.zugschlus.de/
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