Re: Bits from the release team: the plans for etch
>>>>> "Marc" == Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> writes:
Marc> On Thu, 27 Oct 2005 08:54:18 +1000, Brian May
Marc> <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).
Marc> You are mistaken. adduser will print a warning that the user
Marc> already exists and then exit with a zero exit code, if the
Marc> already existing account conforms to the account attributes
Marc> requested in the adduser call.
That is my point - adduser will print a warning if the user already
exists.
So you need to check to make sure the user doesn't exist first, before
attempting to add it. Or you get a stupid warning appearing when
upgrading packages.
>> 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).
Marc> You can also use adduser --quiet and get rid of the
Marc> warnings.
Not according to the man page[1]:
--quiet
Suppress progress messages.
or in a practical sense either:
root@debian:~# adduser aaa
adduser: The user `aaa' already exists.
root@debian:~# adduser --quiet aaa
adduser: The user `aaa' already exists.
(this is sarge/stable - maybe it has changed in unstable?)
>> 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 "/"!
Marc> Deluser has a configuratble regexp and refuses to delete
Marc> files matching that regexp.
Good.
Note:
[1] What is a "progress" message?
--
Brian May <bam@debian.org>
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