[Adduser-devel] Bug#472820: adduser: Need override when home directory exists

[Jeff Hanson]

Package: adduser
Version: 3.103ubuntu1
Severity: wishlist

Ubuntu bug #178616
When a new user is added and the default home directory for the username
already exists, adduser issues a warning and refuses to touch it. This
is desirable to prevent unintentional damage from copying skel and
setting uid/gid. But when a home directory has to be created beforehand
and the admin wants adduser to copy skel and set uid/gid, there is no
way to override the default behavior. This situation arises when the
user's home directory is an individual mount on a md, lvm, or dm-crypt
device. The device must be mounted first so skel is copied to the
correct target but the uid/gid can't be set correctly because the
user/group doesn't exist yet.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers gutsy-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'gutsy-updates'), (500, 'gutsy-security'), (500,
'gutsy-backports'), (500, 'gutsy')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.22-14-generic (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages adduser depends on:
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]   1.5.14ubuntu1    Debian configuration management sy
ii  passwd                  1:4.0.18.1-9     change and administer password and
ii  perl-base               5.8.8-7ubuntu3.1 The Pathologically Eclectic Rubbis

adduser recommends no packages.

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