Hello,
when updating the German translations of the shadow package, I
encountered strange things in the documentation. For example an option
--non-unique for the commands useradd and usermod. With the first, the
system administrator is able to force the system to create a new user
with an ID that already exists, which is related to another user.
One effect I would expect after using useradd with this option is that
files and directories are owned by two persons - as the UID of a file
indicates the owner.
Has anybody an idea about the purpose of such an option?
>From my point of view it is necessary that the respective manual pages
explain why one might use such an option and / or warn what a mess
might be created with it.
On the debian IRC channel, one comment on this problem was, Linux is a
friendly operating system. It will not prevent users from shooting
themselves in the foot.
Please cc your posts to my mail addresse as I am not a subscriber of
this list.
Best regards
Markus