samba - Oct 2022 - wbinfo -U arguments vs --help

For fun, just found an interesting tidbbit with wbinfo cmdline parsing..

# wbinfo --help | grep uid-to
   -U, --uid-to-sid=UID                               Converts uid to sid

but:

$ wbinfo --uid-to-sid=mjt
Invalid option
Usage: [OPTION...]
   -u, --domain-users                                 Lists all domain users
...

Here, there are 2 issues: first, it does not recognize -U/--uid-to-sid
option at all (which is listed in its help output and is documented
in the manpage).

It is interesting how this ever happened. It seems to be consistent
in 4.13, 4.16 and 4.17 releases.

And second, and this very annoying issue is quite common - it prints
out whole --help output in case of option error. It should only print
help/usage when --help is requested, - in case of actual error, this
makes it difficult to find.  And it definitely should clarify which
option is invalid, - it is easy to see if there's only one option,
but if the command line is long, finding the wrong one becomes a
real challenge...

/mjt

On 31/10/2022 12:35, Michael Tokarev via samba wrote:
> For fun, just found an interesting tidbbit with wbinfo cmdline parsing..
> 
> # wbinfo --help | grep uid-to
>  ? -U, --uid-to-sid=UID?????????????????????????????? Converts uid to sid
> 
> but:
> 
> $ wbinfo --uid-to-sid=mjt
The invalid option is 'mjt', it isn't a number, you are possibly 
mistaking it for the rfc2307 attribute 'uid' which is a name. The
'uid'
in this instance is the users Unix ID e.g.

rowland at devstation:~$ wbinfo -U 11104
S-1-5-21-627072207-2265849604-124128874-1104

> Invalid option
> Usage: [OPTION...]
>  ? -u, --domain-users???????????????????????????????? Lists all domain 
> users
> ...
> 
> Here, there are 2 issues: first, it does not recognize -U/--uid-to-sid
> option at all (which is listed in its help output and is documented
> in the manpage).
> 
> It is interesting how this ever happened. It seems to be consistent
> in 4.13, 4.16 and 4.17 releases.
It as been like that since 4.0.0 at least.
> 
> And second, and this very annoying issue is quite common - it prints
> out whole --help output in case of option error. It should only print
> help/usage when --help is requested, - in case of actual error, this
> makes it difficult to find.? And it definitely should clarify which
> option is invalid, - it is easy to see if there's only one option,
> but if the command line is long, finding the wrong one becomes a
> real challenge...

If you wish to change it, I would expect that patches would be readily 
acceptable ;-)

Rowland
> 
> /mjt
>