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useradd: -U ignored when USERGROUPS_ENAB is no, accepted with -g

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A pull request for this has already been merged.

  • #345 by @jayhemnani9910 — merged

Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
rust
Domain
cli

Research direction

Start with the useradd(8) behavior described in the issue and trace how shadow-rs handles USERGROUPS_ENAB, -U, and -g. Compare both reported command cases with GNU shadow 4.17.4; done means explicit -U creates the user’s group despite the setting, and -U with -g is rejected. Pull request #345 is already open.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

useradd(8) describes USERGROUPS_ENAB as the default for -U/-N. shadow-rs lets it override an explicit -U, and accepts -U together with -g:

# echo 'USERGROUPS_ENAB no' >> /etc/login.defs   (after removing the existing line)
# useradd -U u1; id u1
GNU:        uid=1001(u1) gid=1001(u1) groups=1001(u1)
shadow-rs:  uid=1001(u1) gid=100(users) groups=100(users)

# useradd -U -g users u2
GNU:        useradd: options -U and -g conflict   (exit 2)
shadow-rs:  exit 0, creates group u2 and makes it the primary group; -g is ignored

GNU shadow 4.17.4 (Ubuntu 26.04). shadow-rs main 2e1032a.

Dominant language
Rust
Stars
17
Forks
10
Avg merge
18h 30m
Merged PRs (30d)
24

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