Matthew Burgess wrote:
> Hi folks.
> 
> So, we've got a couple of issues with Shadow at the moment.
> 
> 1) Consider the following command:
> 
> root:/# useradd testuser
> useradd: unknown GID 1000
> Group 'mail' not found. Creating the user mailbox file with 0600 mode.
> 
> The first message is because our /etc/default/useradd configuration file 
> contains 'GROUP=1000' (that's installed from shadow-4.0.17).  Now, we can 
> either install a 'users' group as GID 1000, or we can change the default 
> in /etc/default/useradd to one of the GIDs in /etc/passwd.  Personally, I'd 
> prefer the former, as I can't see a suitable default group in /etc/passwd.

I'd prefer a default of 200 or 500.  No real reason, but 1000 seems too
big to me.

My *real* preference would be for the system to automatically make a new
group with the same name as the user if -g is not specified and use
that.  I think that's how RedHat does it.

> The second message is self-explanatory.  BLFS currently uses GID 34, which 
> would leave a bit of a gap in LFS if we were to use it. What issues are 
> likely to occur if LFS were to use GID 16 instead? I'd imagine things may go 
> awry with people restoring from backups, but are is there anything else I'm 
> missing?

I have no problem with LFS installing a mail group using a vule of 34.
That would require a minor adjustment to BLFS, but it wouldn't be a big
problem.

My bigger problem is why is shadow's useradd creating a user mailbox at
all.  It would seem to me that assumptions are being made that are not
valid for most systems.  My "mailbox" is in ~/.mozilla.

> 2) Consider the following command:
> 
> root:/var/mail# useradd -m testuser
> useradd: unknown GID 1000
> useradd: cannot create directory /home/users/testuser
> 
> This time, the second error message is caused because '/home/users' is 
> specified in /etc/default/useradd but we don't create that directory.  Here, 
> my personal preference would be to just change the default (to '/home'), 
> though I'd be happy with creating the necessary directory if folks would 
> prefer that.

Again, this seems that assumptions are being made that are not
warranted.  They may have been at one time, but what goes in /home
besides users?  Make the default /home.

> 3) pld.org.pl is now returning an 'unknown host' error.  Hunting around, I've 
> found ftp://ftp.pld-linux.org/software/shadow but that only has shadow-4.0.3! 
>  
> Would someone be able to chase up the PLD maintainers and see what the 
> problem is with the pld.org.pl box/domain name, oh and perhaps coax them into 
> releasing shadow-4.0.19 too? (for those of you not watching at home, 4.0.18 
> has some pretty nasty brown paper bag bugs).  We may need to consider 
> pointing chapter03/packages.xml to anduin or another mirror if upstream can't 
> sort out the current server issue.

It may be a transient problem, but I see in a whois query:

 The pld.org.pl domain name is undergoing proceeding.

I also don't have a problem with hosting the code on anduin.

  -- Bruce
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