Adduser devel - Feb 2011 - Bug#611898: adduser: manpage mentions nonexistent possibility to run custom scripts

Package: adduser
Version: 3.110
Severity: normal


The description paragraph of the manpage says:
"They are friendlier front ends to the low level tools like useradd,
groupadd and usermod programs, by default choosing Debian policy
conformant UID and GID values, creating a home directory with skeletal
configuration, running a custom script, and other features."

As far as I can tell (I looked around the code a little) adduser does
not provide the mentioned possibility to run custom scripts.
If this is indeed the case the passage should be removed from the
manpage.
Otherwise the manpage should provide documentation where to put / how to
use such scripts.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0.8
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (500, ''stable'')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.26-2-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages adduser depends on:
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]   1.5.24           Debian configuration management sy
ii  passwd                  1:4.1.1-6+lenny1 change and administer password and
ii  perl-base               5.10.0-19lenny3  minimal Perl system

adduser recommends no packages.

Versions of packages adduser suggests:
ii  liblocale-gettext-perl   1.05-4          Using libc functions for internati
ii  perl-modules             5.10.0-19lenny3 Core Perl modules

-- no debconf information

Ludwig Ortmann wrote:
> As far as I can tell (I looked around the code a little) adduser does
> not provide the mentioned possibility to run custom scripts.
> If this is indeed the case the passage should be removed from the
> manpage.
> Otherwise the manpage should provide documentation where to put / how to
> use such scripts.
Search in adduser(8) for "/usr/local/sbin/adduser.local".  But it does
seem to me that this useful feature should probably also be mentioned
under FILES.

Suggested patch attached; my nroff seems okay but may need tweaking.
-- 
JBR
Not the maintainer or even a DD
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