Hi. The chipcard-tools package (source is libchipcard) which I maintain has the following code fragment in it's postscript to add a user chipcard (which it sets up) to the group dialout in order to access serial ports without being root:
if ! getent group | grep -q "^dialout:.*\bchipcard\b" ; then
adduser --quiet chipcard dialout
fi
Now, if the dialout group entry contains nonexistent groups, above code fragment
will die with
gpasswd: unknown user nonexistent
adduser: `/usr/bin/gpasswd -M nonexistent,chipcard dialout'
returned error code 1. Aborting.
IMO the behavior of adduser (or gpasswd) is incorrect. Either the "nonexistent"
user should be deleted or kept, but it should not affect addition of the
chipcard user to the group.
So here's my question:
Should I
- file a bug against adduser or gpasswd?
- improve the postinsts handling of the situation
Note that access to the serial/usbtty ports is vital to the daemon in the
package.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
Cheers and TIA
T.
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