This one time, at band camp, Ian Bruce said: > On Fri, 9 Jun 2006 10:57:57 +0100 > Stephen Gran <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > This one time, at band camp, Ian Bruce said: > > > "adduser" produces a lot of error messages about unrecognized > > > parameters, which may or may not be harmless. This may indicate a > > > conflict with some version of another package, but it's not clear to me > > > which one. > > > > You have these directives set in /etc/login.defs. My understanding is > > that they have been deprecated for some time, but now they create a > > warning message. This is not a bug in adduser (in fact, I'm not sure > > it's a bug at all - programs do change the acceptable options in their > > conf files over time, and it's not a good idea to automatedly overwrite > > an edited config file on upgrade). > > > > Others, I leave it to you whether or not you want to reassign this to > > login (the package responsible for login.defs) or just close it. I can > > see arguments both ways. > > The version of "login" on this system is 1:4.0.3-31sarge5 (current > "stable" archive). I have not edited /etc/login.defs since installing > the operating system. I suggest that a conflict, or an updated version > dependency, be put in the "passwd" package to prevent this problem, > since it's apparently the one that no longer recognizes these > parameters.
I suggest opening that bug on passwd, then. > It's pretty alarming if you don't know what the cause of it > is; it barfs up these errors every time "apt-get" tries to create a > system userid. It's clearly passwd and login. That was never in question. It's just that it's not a bug in adduser itself, since adduser only uses these others. It's quite a noisy and alarming looking message, but since it has no side effects, I haven't been particualrly bothered by it. Please take it up with the passwd and login maintainers if you disagree. > It might also be a good idea to change the error message to refer to the > login.defs file which is causing the problem; if this had been the case, > I could have figured it out for myself. The program /usr/sbin/useradd > contains the following string (as do several others from this package): > > "configuration error - unknown item '%s' (notify administrator)" > > How about changing that to: > > "configuration error - unknown item '%s' in file '%s' (notify administrator)" Please note that in your bug report to passwd. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------- | ,''`. Stephen Gran | | : :' : [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | `. `' Debian user, admin, and developer | | `- http://www.debian.org | -----------------------------------------------------------------
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