Included here are the patches from the shadow-utils-970616-11.src.rpm
(RedHat 5.0 updates). I'd like to make it possible to build binary
packages for all Linux distributions "out of the box" from the same
upstream sources. This needs more work for RedHat 5.0, and I only have
RedHat 4.2 (hint hint). If you have any suggestions regarding this
package, please contact me. Perhaps the necessary changes can be
included in the standard sources, so that everything can be build with
one simple command (rpm -ta shadow-xxxxxx.tar.gz).
One suggestion for the shadow-utils-970616-11 patch: instead of adding
new (sometimes quite distribution-specific) options to useradd (and
symlinking adduser -> useradd), I'd suggest to use a program or script
called "adduser" that implements the distribution-specific UID/GID
allocation etc. and runs useradd to do all the dirty work (modifying
password files etc.). Also, please don't change the default behaviour
of useradd, which is to create the home directory only if the -m option
is specified). I'd like to keep useradd simple, and compatible with
other implementations (the user* and group* commands are quite similar
to commands with the same names found on many commercial UN*X systems).
I'd suggest to take a look at the adduser-3.x package from the Debian
distribution. It's a perl script, which shouldn't be too hard to modify
to suit the requirements of Red Hat, or any other Linux distribution.
It runs programs from the shadow suite to do the actual password file
modifications, is reasonably user friendly, and configurable.
Comments?
--marekm
