[Adduser-devel] Should userdel remove users crontabs?

[Christian Perrier]

(Marc, nagging you again, essentially to let you aware of discussed
issues. This is probably not the last time as I'm currently digging
into "wishlist" bugs for shadow)

>From #173431:

    In the manpage of "userdel", I can read this: -r Files in the
    user's home directory will be removed along with the home
    directory itself and the user's mail spool.  Files located in
    other file systems will have to be searched for and deleted
    manually.

    I think "userdel -r" could also remove the crontabs of the user at
    /var/spool/cron/crontabs/$USER


Again, I have shared feelings about such bug reports.

As a sysadmin, I have already had to deal with "dead" crontabs after
deleting a user (though not often, "my" users are rarely interactive
users). So, in first approach, I tend to agree with the bug submitter.

However, this leads us to a dangerous slope towards removing all files
belonging to the user and, again, giving userdel the role of a high
level utility.

As deluser (from the adduser package) already includes such
possibility (through its "--remove-all-files" switch), I'm inclined to
reject this request and either mark the bug as wontfix, or just close
it.

Advices?


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