[Adduser-devel] Bug#508740: adduser: confusing message regarding format of group names

[Vincent McIntyre]

On Wed, Nov 23, 2011 at 09:44:11PM +1100, Marc Haber wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Dec 15, 2008 at 08:48:50AM +1100, Vincent McIntyre wrote:
> > addgroup: Please enter a username matching the regular expression configured
> > via the NAME_REGEX configuration variable.  Use the `--force-badname'
> > option to relax this check or reconfigure NAME_REGEX.
> 
> NAME_REGEX is mentioned in the man page for adduser.conf, which is
> referenced in the adduser man page.
> 
> I can offer to include NAME_REGEX into the default configuration file,
> if that helps for people who cannot find the man page. Would that help?
> 

I think it would. In fact this was done before I even reported the bug,
http://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/adduser/trunk/adduser.conf?r1=738&r2=744
Ah, the joy of running stable.

The relevant lines are there in my copy of /usr/share/adduser/adduser.conf,
and the postinst copies this to /etc/adduser.conf if the latter is missing.
So I think this bug can be closed.

I suspect that I did not see the regex in my copy of /etc/adduser.conf
because I had an old version, kept there across upgrades.

Looking at the manpage text again, it seems that I must not have made the
connection "configuration file" == "/etc/adduser.conf". Which was lame of me.

The only change I can think of that would have avoided my confusion would be
more explicitly pointing to the manpage for the config file, eg

--- usr/share/man/man8/adduser.8.orig   2011-11-24 07:27:43.407629520 +1100
+++ usr/share/man/man8/adduser.8        2011-11-24 07:31:14.739404373 +1100
@@ -199,6 +199,8 @@
 and 
 .B addgroup
 to apply only a weak check for validity of the name.
+.B NAME_REGEX
+is described in adduser.conf(5).
 .TP
 .B \-\-gecos GECOS
 Set the gecos field for the new entry generated.


Thanks for your care of this package.

Kind regards,
Vince