[Bug 1490777] [NEW] adduser does not behave as documented in man page

[Edward Gow]

Public bug reported:

The man page for the adduser utility clearly states the exit code
behavior to be expected as:

EXIT VALUES
       0      The user exists as specified. This can have 2 causes: The user was created by adduser or the user was already present on the system before adduser was invoked. If adduser was returning 0 , invoking adduser a second time with the same parameters as before also returns 0.

       1      Creating the user or group failed because it was already present with other UID/GID than specified. The username or groupname was rejected because of a mismatch with the configured regular expressions, see adduser.conf(5). Adduser has been aborted by a signal.
              Or for many other yet undocumented reasons which are printed to console then. You may then consider to remove --quiet to make adduser more verbose.
 
In actual operation, adduser returns 1 if the user already exists. The documented behavior would be preferable. 

System details:

Description:	Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS
Release:	12.04

adduser:
  Installed: 3.113ubuntu2
  Candidate: 3.113ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 3.113ubuntu2 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: adduser 3.113ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-49.81~precise1-generic 3.13.11-ckt17
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-49-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu17.8
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Aug 31 16:43:48 2015
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 12.04.3 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20130820.2)
MarkForUpload: True
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: adduser
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

** Affects: adduser (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: amd64 apport-bug precise

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1490777

Title:
  adduser does not behave as documented in man page

Status in adduser package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  The man page for the adduser utility clearly states the exit code
  behavior to be expected as:

  EXIT VALUES
         0      The user exists as specified. This can have 2 causes: The user was created by adduser or the user was already present on the system before adduser was invoked. If adduser was returning 0 , invoking adduser a second time with the same parameters as before also returns 0.

         1      Creating the user or group failed because it was already present with other UID/GID than specified. The username or groupname was rejected because of a mismatch with the configured regular expressions, see adduser.conf(5). Adduser has been aborted by a signal.
                Or for many other yet undocumented reasons which are printed to console then. You may then consider to remove --quiet to make adduser more verbose.
   
  In actual operation, adduser returns 1 if the user already exists. The documented behavior would be preferable. 

  System details:

  Description:	Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS
  Release:	12.04

  adduser:
    Installed: 3.113ubuntu2
    Candidate: 3.113ubuntu2
    Version table:
   *** 3.113ubuntu2 0
          500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main amd64 Packages
          100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
  Package: adduser 3.113ubuntu2
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-49.81~precise1-generic 3.13.11-ckt17
  Uname: Linux 3.13.0-49-generic x86_64
  ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu17.8
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Mon Aug 31 16:43:48 2015
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-Server 12.04.3 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20130820.2)
  MarkForUpload: True
  PackageArchitecture: all
  ProcEnviron:
   TERM=xterm-256color
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: adduser
  UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

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