[Bug 31675] Problem when making many users with "users admin. tool" at one time

[Rafael Ávila Coya]

Public bug report changed:
https://launchpad.net/malone/bugs/31675

Comment:
I tell you:

I am giving lessons of UNIX/Linux basics, using Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy (preview release in most of the computers) to 14 students, althougt at that time there were only 7 in the classroom.
We were making practice of creating users and groups, with the GUI 'user administration tool', and commands like adduser, useradd, usermod, addgroup, and so on. I told them that using the GUI tool could be the most easy and advisable way to create users, and then usermod and other commands to assign extra groups to each user and things like that. I suggested them to create accounts in there own computers for the rest of the users in the classroom (15, including me). As you know, with the GUI tool, you can edit 2 or more users, but they are not created until you click a "final" OK to the application. One student and me were clicking OK each 4 or 5 users (or so), and didn't have any problem. But it seems that the rest of them (5 students) introduced all the users (15) one after one, without clicking the "final OK" to the whole application. What happened is that, when they finally clicked OK, the app. start "working" but didn't finish. It didn't crashed, nor freezed. It got in the state of "working", but never finishing the task, you understand?
I am now at home, and reproduced the situation in my laptop (I didn't bring it to the school, so it is a new machine! - Ubuntu Breezy (not preview, but the "real" one)). I started the GUI and tried to create 13 new users (login names 'uno', 'dos', 'tres', 'cuatro', and so on (-< they are the numbers in spanish :-) )). I didn't put GECOS to anyone, and password was the login name of each user, just to make it the easy way. I assigned them, in the 'advanced' section, the home directory '/home/taller2/$user' , because I wanted to teach them that it's good costume to put users of different departments in different home subdirectories ("taller2" is the name of the classroom I teach). I left the rest of the options the default ones. Result? The same: It starts "working", but never finishes (when at lesson, I told them to swich to another desktop, but at the end of it, 1 and a half hours after, it was still "working"...). I woud say that the correct word for this is that it was freezed, but I am not sure which term is the correct for that state.

I think I didn't forget any important thing. My advice is that you try
to reproduce the same situation, and see it youself. I'm affraid I don't
have enough knowledge to help. I don't even know where the 'user
administration tool' package's source is!

Cheers and deep thanks to all of the community. You make this world a bit nicer and worthwhile.
Anything I can't help you, don't hesitate to contact me.

Rafael Ávila Coya.