Bug 295511 - userdel man page inconsistency
Summary: userdel man page inconsistency
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: shadow-utils
Version: 7
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
low
low
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Peter Vrabec
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2007-09-18 21:15 UTC by Ed Swierk
Modified: 2007-11-30 22:12 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2007-09-18 21:42:10 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:

Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Ed Swierk 2007-09-18 21:15:22 UTC 
The description of the -f/--force option in the userdel man page says "This
option forces the removal of the user, even if she is still logged in."

Under CAVEATS, it says "userdel will not allow you to remove an account if the
user is currently logged in. You must kill any running processes which belong to
an account that you are deleting."

The actual behavior of the userdel program is consistent with the CAVEATS note;
-f does not allow removing a user account if the user is logged in.
Comment 1 Ed Swierk 2007-09-18 21:29:34 UTC 
Actually, userdel -f does indeed delete the user, but it still complains "user
blat is currently logged in".  The return code is 0 instead of 8, however. 
Pretty confusing behavior.
Comment 2 Tomas Mraz 2007-09-18 21:42:10 UTC 
I don't really see it as confusing as the return code is what is relevant for
testing the regular unix commands success/failure.
Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.