[Adduser-devel] Bug#545714: deluser does not remove empty main group when the suer is member of it

[Milan Bouchet-Valat]

Package: adduser
Version: 3.110

Hi!

I've hit a problem when trying to fix a bug in the
system-tools-backends/gnome-system-tools, and I discovered a strange
behavior from deluser. If you add an user to its main group, deluser
won't automatically remove that group when deleting the user, even if
he's the only member left. On the other hand, if the user is not member
of his main group, the group is removed (with a message: "Warning: group
X is now empty.", which could be more explicit about what it does BTW).

So I'm wondering if there's a rationale about that, or if that's merely
a bug. This will affect what we should do too.


Additionally, I've noticed that adduser does not add the new user to its
main group. Why? I'd like your feedback on that separate matter since
I'd like to rework the way the gnome-system-tools manage the main group.
ATM, we always add the user to his main group (thus hitting the present
bug), but that may be a wrong policy. Anyway, we should be able to
depend on adduser instead of doing our own decisions before calling that
tool.


Thanks for your feedback!