[Bug 2063200] Re: useradd --extrausers --groups tries to lock /etc/group

[Philip Meulengracht]

Hey!

Sorry for the slow response from the Core team, I can verify this is now
working with passwd in proposed. I was able to add a user with
--extrausers and --groups switches together. It no longer fails on
locking /etc/groups

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Title:
  useradd --extrausers --groups tries to lock /etc/group

Status in shadow package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in shadow source package in Jammy:
  Invalid
Status in shadow source package in Mantic:
  Won't Fix
Status in shadow source package in Noble:
  Fix Committed
Status in shadow source package in Oracular:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  [ Impact ]

  On Ubuntu Core 24 calling the command line

  useradd --extrausers --groups somegroup somenewuser

  ... fails with:

  useradd: cannot lock /etc/group; try again later.

  It worked on 22.04. /etc is not writable. It also fails if somegroup
  is a group in extrausers.

  [ Test Plan ]

  Part of the upload is adding an autopkgtest script testing useradd and
  usermod in the extrausers+readonly-etc case.

  In addition, the following commands should be run as root in a fresh
  container:

  ```
  # Install prerequisites
  apt install libnss-extrausers
  sed -i -r '/^(passwd|group|shadow|gshadow)/ s/$/ extrausers/' /etc/nsswitch.conf # enable extrausers in group, passwd, shadow and gshadow

  # Sanity checks of "normal" path
  groupadd etcgroup
  useradd --groups etcgroup etcuser
  id etcuser | grep etcgroup
  groupadd etcgroup2
  usermod --groups etcgroup2 etcuser
  id etcuser | grep etcgroup2
  useradd --groups nullgroup etcuser || echo Successfully rejected invalid group

  ls /var/lib/extrausers/ # should be empty

  # Sanity checks of "extrausers" path in rw context
  groupadd --extrausers extragroup
  useradd --extrausers --groups extragroup extrauser # currently fails
  id extrauser | grep extragroup
  useradd --extrausers extrauser2
  id extrauser2

  # Sanity checks of "extrausers" path in ro context
  mv /etc /etc-rw
  mkdir /etc
  mount -o bind,ro /etc-rw /etc
  groupadd --extrausers extragroup2
  useradd --extrausers --groups etcgroup extrauser3
  id extrauser4 | grep etcgroup
  ```

  Furthermore, validation from the Ubuntu Core team that this actually fixes
  their use case is required.

  [ Where problems could occur ]

  Regression potential is in the group validation stage of the `usermod` and
  `useradd` tools. Besides the usual risks related to C code, the various failure
  scenarios that come to mind are:

  * try to add the user to an non-existing local group, which would fail further
    down with a different error message
  * actually fail to identify a valid local group
  * Fail to either add the user to the system, or the user to the group
  * Update the wrong file (/var/lib/extrausers/* vs /etc/*)

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