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Package: adduser
Version: 3.134
Severity: wishlist
Tags: patch

Hello dear adduser maintainer(s),

I swear, *every* time I do `adduser user group` I have
to look up on the internet how to make that group available
to that user in a running shell session...

The attached patch adds two phrases to the "Add an existing user
to an existing group" paragraph that tells the reader to use
`newgrp` to achieve that and mentions `newgrp` in the
"SEE ALSO" section.

I'd be glad if you could include this in the man page so I
(and probably others) can stop looking it up on the internet
each time...

Best greetings and thank you for your work on `adduser`.
*t

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 12.10
APT prefers stable-security
APT policy: (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 6.1.0-32-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE
Locale: LANG=de_CH.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_CH.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=de_CH:de
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages adduser depends on:
ii passwd 1:4.13+dfsg1-1+b1

adduser recommends no packages.

Versions of packages adduser suggests:
ii cron 3.0pl1-162
ii liblocale-gettext-perl 1.07-5
ii perl 5.36.0-7+deb12u2
pn quota <none>

-- debconf information excluded

--- adduser-3.150/doc/adduser.8 2025-03-28 14:21:07.000000000 +0100
+++ adduser-3.150-new/doc/adduser.8 2025-04-21 14:32:25.573790916 +0200
@@ -293,6 +293,11 @@
If called with two non-option arguments,
\fBadduser\fP will add an existing user to an existing group.

+The group will only be available to a user in a new shell
+session. If you need the group to be immediately available
+to a user in a shell session, then execute \fBnewgrp group\fP
+or \fBnewgrp -\fP in that user's shell session.
+
.SH OPTIONS
Different modes of \fBadduser\fP allow different options.
If no valid modes are listed for a option,
@@ -781,6 +786,7 @@
.BR adduser.conf (5),
.BR deluser (8),
.BR groupadd (8),
+.BR newgrp (1),
.BR useradd (8),
.BR usermod (8),
.BR /usr/share/doc/base-passwd/users-and-groups.html

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hi,

I am totally not sure whether this is appropriate. I agree that this
behavior is a quick of many operating systems, but I don't think that
adduser should begin to document operating system quirks. People might
see this as an issue in adduser, which it isn't.

Greetings
Marc


On Mon, Apr 21, 2025 at 02:44:35PM +0200, Tomas Pospisek wrote:

Package: adduser
Version: 3.134
Severity: wishlist
Tags: patch

Hello dear adduser maintainer(s),

I swear, *every* time I do `adduser user group` I have
to look up on the internet how to make that group available
to that user in a running shell session...

The attached patch adds two phrases to the "Add an existing user
to an existing group" paragraph that tells the reader to use
`newgrp` to achieve that and mentions `newgrp` in the
"SEE ALSO" section.

I'd be glad if you could include this in the man page so I
(and probably others) can stop looking it up on the internet
each time...

Best greetings and thank you for your work on `adduser`.
*t

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 12.10
APT prefers stable-security
APT policy: (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 6.1.0-32-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE
Locale: LANG=de_CH.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_CH.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=de_CH:de
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages adduser depends on:
ii passwd 1:4.13+dfsg1-1+b1

adduser recommends no packages.

Versions of packages adduser suggests:
ii cron 3.0pl1-162
ii liblocale-gettext-perl 1.07-5
ii perl 5.36.0-7+deb12u2
pn quota <none>

-- debconf information excluded

--- adduser-3.150/doc/adduser.8 2025-03-28 14:21:07.000000000 +0100 >+++ adduser-3.150-new/doc/adduser.8 2025-04-21 14:32:25.573790916 +0200
@@ -293,6 +293,11 @@
If called with two non-option arguments,
\fBadduser\fP will add an existing user to an existing group.

+The group will only be available to a user in a new shell
+session. If you need the group to be immediately available
+to a user in a shell session, then execute \fBnewgrp group\fP
+or \fBnewgrp -\fP in that user's shell session.
+
.SH OPTIONS
Different modes of \fBadduser\fP allow different options.
If no valid modes are listed for a option,
@@ -781,6 +786,7 @@
.BR adduser.conf (5),
.BR deluser (8),
.BR groupadd (8),
+.BR newgrp (1),
.BR useradd (8),
.BR usermod (8),
.BR /usr/share/doc/base-passwd/users-and-groups.html

-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marc Haber | "I don't trust Computers. They | Mailadresse im Header Leimen, Germany | lose things." Winona Ryder | Fon: *49 6224 1600402 Nordisch by Nature | How to make an American Quilt | Fax: *49 6224 1600421

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Hi Marc!

On Mon, 21 Apr 2025, Marc Haber wrote:

I am totally not sure whether this is appropriate. I agree that this behavior is a quick of many operating systems, but I don't think that adduser should begin to document operating system quirks. People might see this as an issue in adduser, which it isn't.

Well, I mean the goal of "adduser user group" is to add a user to a
group... except that - it doesn't. As a user of adduser I'm not really interested who's fault it is - I just want to get the job done.

At some point I have somehow found out that using some other magic in
addition is necessary. Other users of adduser might not know and just
think that `adduser user group` doesn't work or is broken or ...

As I said - the user doesn't and shouldn't actually need to care where the blame lies...

So why not give the user a hand to get the job done?
*t

On Mon, Apr 21, 2025 at 02:44:35PM +0200, Tomas Pospisek wrote:

Package: adduser
Version: 3.134
Severity: wishlist
Tags: patch

Hello dear adduser maintainer(s),

I swear, *every* time I do `adduser user group` I have
to look up on the internet how to make that group available
to that user in a running shell session...

The attached patch adds two phrases to the "Add an existing user
to an existing group" paragraph that tells the reader to use
`newgrp` to achieve that and mentions `newgrp` in the
"SEE ALSO" section.

I'd be glad if you could include this in the man page so I
(and probably others) can stop looking it up on the internet
each time...

Best greetings and thank you for your work on `adduser`.
*t

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 12.10
APT prefers stable-security
APT policy: (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 6.1.0-32-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE
Locale: LANG=de_CH.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_CH.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8),
LANGUAGE=de_CH:de
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages adduser depends on:
ii passwd 1:4.13+dfsg1-1+b1

adduser recommends no packages.

Versions of packages adduser suggests:
ii cron 3.0pl1-162
ii liblocale-gettext-perl 1.07-5
ii perl 5.36.0-7+deb12u2
pn quota <none>

-- debconf information excluded

--- adduser-3.150/doc/adduser.8 2025-03-28 14:21:07.000000000 +0100
+++ adduser-3.150-new/doc/adduser.8 2025-04-21 14:32:25.573790916 +0200
@@ -293,6 +293,11 @@
If called with two non-option arguments,
\fBadduser\fP will add an existing user to an existing group.

+The group will only be available to a user in a new shell
+session. If you need the group to be immediately available
+to a user in a shell session, then execute \fBnewgrp group\fP
+or \fBnewgrp -\fP in that user's shell session.
+
.SH OPTIONS
Different modes of \fBadduser\fP allow different options.
If no valid modes are listed for a option,
@@ -781,6 +786,7 @@
.BR adduser.conf (5),
.BR deluser (8),
.BR groupadd (8),
+.BR newgrp (1),
.BR useradd (8),
.BR usermod (8),
.BR /usr/share/doc/base-passwd/users-and-groups.html

-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marc Haber | "I don't trust Computers. They | Mailadresse im Header Leimen, Germany | lose things." Winona Ryder | Fon: *49 6224 1600402 Nordisch by Nature | How to make an American Quilt | Fax: *49 6224 1600421

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Mon, Apr 21, 2025 at 11:14:47PM +0200, Tomas Pospisek wrote:

On Mon, 21 Apr 2025, Marc Haber wrote:

I am totally not sure whether this is appropriate. I agree that this >>behavior is a quick of many operating systems, but I don't think
that adduser should begin to document operating system quirks.
People might see this as an issue in adduser, which it isn't.

Well, I mean the goal of "adduser user group" is to add a user to a
group... except that - it doesn't. As a user of adduser I'm not really >interested who's fault it is - I just want to get the job done.

It adds the user to the group. It is not adduser's fault that /etc/group
is just read on login.

At some point I have somehow found out that using some other magic in >addition is necessary. Other users of adduser might not know and just
think that `adduser user group` doesn't work or is broken or ...

That is not magic, it's basic Unix semantic.

So why not give the user a hand to get the job done?

Because the next user is going to want more unrelated docs. I have spent
in the last release cycle literally days to clean adduser's man pages of redundant information to make it easier to maintain them. This would be counterproductive.

Greetings
Marc

P.S.: I keep falling into that trap myself

-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marc Haber | "I don't trust Computers. They | Mailadresse im Header Leimen, Germany | lose things." Winona Ryder | Fon: *49 6224 1600402 Nordisch by Nature | How to make an American Quilt | Fax: *49 6224 1600421

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Tue, 22 Apr 2025, Jason Franklin wrote:

On Tue, Apr 22, 2025 at 09:54:54AM -0400, Jason Franklin wrote:

At some point I have somehow found out that using some other magic in
addition is necessary. Other users of adduser might not know and just think >>> that `adduser user group` doesn't work or is broken or ...

I actually wouldn't rely on "newgrp" too much for this purpose. It may
not work the way you think.

To follow up on what I said here, I also want to address the patch you provided as this may be different than what you think as well.

If you do…

# adduser foo bar

… you have added user "foo" to group "bar" where the latter is now
a supplementary group for the former (i.e., you've updated system
records).

If the user now runs "newgrp bar", the user will assume "bar" as their primary group. This is ~not~ the same as having the group appended to
their supplementary groups in their current shell session.

There are other differences, but "log out & log in" remains the best and
most complete and correct advice for this situation. It provides the
most predictable result for the user.

I agree with that

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Tue, Apr 22, 2025 at 12:18:42PM -0400, Jason Franklin wrote:

Marc, do you think this is reasonable?

I am still not a fan. That additional language needs to be maintained, translated, proofread, and discussed. I'd rather not having to do that.

Greetings
Marc

-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marc Haber | "I don't trust Computers. They | Mailadresse im Header Leimen, Germany | lose things." Winona Ryder | Fon: *49 6224 1600402 Nordisch by Nature | How to make an American Quilt | Fax: *49 6224 1600421

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Tue, 22 Apr 2025, Marc Haber wrote:

On Tue, Apr 22, 2025 at 12:18:42PM -0400, Jason Franklin wrote:

Marc, do you think this is reasonable?

I am still not a fan. That additional language needs to be maintained, translated, proofread, and discussed. I'd rather not having to do that.

So I suggest to add just *one* *single* phrase:

"The added group will not be visible in current user sessions"

Is that an acceptable compromise between "the user is left completely in
the dark" and "maintaining additional words adds too much of a workload"?
*t

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Wed, Apr 23, 2025 at 12:01:45PM +0200, Tomas Pospisek wrote:

"The added group will not be visible in current user sessions"

There will be a bug report "please make added groups visible in current
user sessions" since this sentence suggests that it's a design decision
in adduser.

Is that an acceptable compromise between "the user is left completely
in the dark" and "maintaining additional words adds too much of a
workload"?

"Leaving people in the dark" is suggesting that the adduser maintainers
act in bad faith. We Don't.

*t

-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Marc Haber | "I don't trust Computers. They | Mailadresse im Header Leimen, Germany | lose things." Winona Ryder | Fon: *49 6224 1600402 Nordisch by Nature | How to make an American Quilt | Fax: *49 6224 1600421

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Thu, 24 Apr 2025, Marc Haber wrote:

On Wed, Apr 23, 2025 at 12:01:45PM +0200, Tomas Pospisek wrote:

"The added group will not be visible in current user sessions"

There will be a bug report "please make added groups visible in current user sessions" since this sentence suggests that it's a design decision in adduser.

Is that an acceptable compromise between "the user is left completely in
the dark" and "maintaining additional words adds too much of a workload"?

"Leaving people in the dark" is suggesting that the adduser maintainers act in bad faith. We Don't.

Is there a desire to improve the situation for the user or is there not? Because if there is no desire to improve the situtation for the user then
there is no point discussing semantics of words. This discussion has been
going on for a dozen of posts with me trying to improve the situtation of
the `adduser` user but I have yet to see a constructive reply from you
Marc - constructive in the sense "yes this is a problem and yes I want to improve the life of an `adduser` user".

So if there's no desire to improve the adduser manpage or adduser with
respect to the problem at hand then there's no point in spending time discussing it, or am I misunderstanding something?

I do understand your concern Marc, that any byte published is a byte that
needs to be maintained. But if that is the argument that tops all the
others then no change is possible.

Again: if there's no will to change anything and if that is the top
argument then there's no point in further discussion.
*t

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

This is a MIME-formatted message. If you see this text it means that your E-mail software does not support MIME-formatted messages.

Hello Tomas,
hello Marc,
hello Jason,
sorry for comming in late into the discussion, I was offline for some
days.

Regarding the translations:
If desired, I can quickly poll all active translators for the update. Preferrably this week, as I have some time.

Regarding the proposal:
I agree that a man page for a command should not be a general
tutorial. But I would not see this as strict - if there is a more
general misconception or something helpful for the users, I would
personally add it. And the last proposal "A logged in user will need
to log out and log back in for the change to take effect." sounded
quite sensible to me, not overreaching.

But in the end, of course, it is Marcs decision.

Greetings

Helge

--
Dr. Helge Kreutzmann debian@helgefjell.de
Dipl.-Phys. http://www.helgefjell.de/debian.php
64bit GNU powered gpg signed mail preferred
Help keep free software "libre": http://www.ffii.de/

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