[Adduser-devel] Bug#399992: adduser: misleading warning message

[Alexander Klauer]

Package: adduser
Version: 3.99
Severity: minor


When calling e.g.

adduser --no-create-home --home /afs/path/to/home --uid 40003 johndoe

adduser gives me the warning message:

Warning: The home dir you specified does not exist.

This is wrong in my case. The specified directory DOES exists, but the 
root user does not have access to its parent dir, as opposed to normal 
users with sufficient AFS access permissions.

I suggest to add a check to adduser whether it can access the parent 
dir, and if not, output a different warning message, such as

Warning: Unable to access parent directory of specified home dir.

Thank you!


Best regards,
Alexander

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.19-rc5-mm1
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages adduser depends on:
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]       1.5.9        Debian configuration management sy
ii  passwd                      1:4.0.18.1-5 change and administer password and
ii  perl-base                   5.8.8-6.1    The Pathologically Eclectic Rubbis

adduser recommends no packages.

-- debconf information:
* adduser/homedir-permission: true