[Adduser-devel] Bug#316089: chage fix broken

[Brian Nelson]

On Wed, Jul 20, 2005 at 08:12:25AM +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
> tags #316089 - sid etch sarge
> confirmed #316089 3.65
> thanks
> 
> On Tue, Jul 19, 2005 at 08:41:59PM -0700, Brian Nelson wrote:
> > The fix for this appears to be broken.  I see:
> > 
> > Setting up exim4-config (4.52-1) ...
> > Adding system-user for exim (v4)
> > chage: can't open shadow password fileUse of uninitialized value in
> > concatenation (.) or string at /usr/sbin/adduser line 400.
> > groupdel: group Debian-exim does not exist
> > dpkg: error processing exim4-config (--configure):
> >  subprocess post-installation script return error exit status 1
> 
> That's kind of a cosmetic issue, the "use of unitiailized value" comes
> from the construction of the error message (which does not get output
> here). Which version of passwd do you have installed on your system?

It was actually an old version: 1:4.0.3-35

> The cosmetic issue has been fixed in svn, and I cannot reproduce the
> issue any more here. However, that error message shouldn't have been
> displayed in any place since this is the case the chage error handling
> change was supposed to handle specially (which is does on my test
> system). Can you please try
> 
> adduser --system --group --home /var/spool/exim4 --no-create-home \
>                 --disabled-login --force-badname Debian-exim-test
> 
> on your system and give me the output? The Debian-exim-test account
> can be removed again afterwards.

It appears to work fine on a fully updated sid system:

# adduser --system --group --home /var/spool/exim4 --no-create-home --disabled-login --force-badname Debian-exim-test
adduser: Warning: The home dir you specified does not exist.
Allowing use of questionable username.
Adding system user `Debian-exim-test'...
Adding new group `Debian-exim-test' (101).
Adding new user `Debian-exim-test' (101) with group `Debian-exim-test'.
chage: the shadow password file is not present
chage failed with return code 3, shadow not enabled, password aging cannot be set. Continuing.Not creating home directory.

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