Re: pkg/40737: bad flag in useradd for Linux

[Piotr Meyer <aniou%smutek.pl@localhost>]

The following reply was made to PR pkg/40737; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Piotr Meyer <aniou%smutek.pl@localhost>
To: gnats-bugs%NetBSD.org@localhost
Cc: Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg%britannica.bec.de@localhost>
Subject: Re: pkg/40737: bad flag in useradd for Linux
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:00:00 +0100

 On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 04:40:04PM +0000, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
 
 >  Only if you can provide a way that works on all distributions to inhibit
 >  the creation of the home directory. It was broken before, so this is not
 >  really worse.
 
 I made some checks and short summary about useradd behaviout:
 
 1. Default behaviour for many distributions is _do_not_ make homedir
    unless '-m' is provided. Examples: Slackware, Debian (and similar),
    Gentoo. 
 
 2. Some distros has RH extension: support for option CREATE_HOME placed
    in /etc/login.defs. With default settings (yes) they need extra
    switch, '-M' (another part of non-standard ext.) to avoid creating 
    homedir. Examples: RHEL, Fedora, CentOS, Mandriva.
 
 3. You change very little annoying behaviour: creating '/var/lib' when 
    some application's users has '/var/lib/foo' as home, or creating 
    '/var/spool' after installing postfix (how many distros has problem
    with this?) into regular catastrophe: now users non-RH based distros
    cannot make packages. Congratulations. 
    
    FYI: I known about only two linux distributions heavily based on
    binary packages built with pkgsrc. Voltalinux and Draco GNU/Linux. 
    Both uses Slackware  as their base system, so both are affected by
    last change.
 
 -- 
 Piotr 'aniou' Meyer