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

[Marc Haber]

On Thu, Nov 23, 2006 at 11:30:03AM +0100, Alexander Klauer wrote:
> 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.

I'd prefer changing the error message to "Warning: The home dir you
specified cannot be accessed", with "dir does not exist" being a
special case (a not existing directory is inaccessible).

This change will have to wait until post-etch due to translations.

Greetings from Käfertal
Marc

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