This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
Subject: groupadd -o??????????????? From: "Mike A. Harris" <mharris@meteng.on.ca> Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 02:19:50 -0400 (EDT) The groupadd command lists a "-o" option. The manpage talks about this mythical option too. It says: SYNOPSIS groupadd [-g gid [-o]] [-r] [-f] group [SNIP] -g gid The numerical value of the group's ID. This value must be unique, unless the -o option is used. The value must be non-negative. The default is to use [SNIP] -f This is force flag. This will stop groupadd exit with error when the group about to be added already exists on the system. If that is the case, the group won't be altered (or added again, for that matter). This option also modifies the way -g option works. When you request a gid that it is not unique and you don't give -o option too, the group creation will fall back to the standard behavior (adding a Three mentions of "-o" being used, so the manpage author obviously knows a great deal about this "-o" option. It appears that he wanted to keep this secret information to himself though as there is no actual explanation as to what -o does. Someone tell me, and I'll do my part and submit a patch to the maintainer. Take care, TTYL === Subject: Re: groupadd -o??????????????? From: Peter Blomgren <blomgren@monster.stanford.edu> Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 00:00:35 -0700 (PDT) Mike, Maybe I'm too used to reading cryptic man pages, but this one seems pretty clear to me... > The groupadd command lists a "-o" option. > > SYNOPSIS > groupadd [-g gid [-o]] [-r] [-f] group > [SNIP] > -g gid The numerical value of the group's ID. This value > must be unique, unless the -o option is used. Hence, 'groupadd -g 0 haXX0r' will fail (groupadd: gid 0 is not unique), but 'groupadd -g 0 -o haXX0r' will successfully add the group haXX0r with gid=0 (as an alias for the "root" group). > [SNIP] > -f [SNIP] This option also modifies the way -g option works. > When you request a gid that it is not unique and > you don't give -o option too, the group creation > will fall back to the standard behavior (adding a [UNSNIP] group as neither -g or -o options were specified). [UNSNIP] This is an option added by Red Hat Software. Hence, 'groupadd -g 0 -f haxx0r' will add the group haxx0r, with a GID is that in _new_ AND _unique_ (gid>500 unless the "-r" option is given, in which case gid<500...). Finally 'groupadd -g 0 -o -f haxx0r' is equivalent to 'groupadd -g 0 -o haxx0r' since there is nothing to force. === Subject: Re: groupadd -o??????????????? From: "Julie" <jockgrrl@ix.netcom.com> Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 02:54:44 -0500 From: Mike A. Harris <mharris@meteng.on.ca> > Three mentions of "-o" being used, so the manpage author > obviously knows a great deal about this "-o" option. It appears > that he wanted to keep this secret information to himself though > as there is no actual explanation as to what -o does. "-o" is the "override" option for non-unique GID checks. And last time I looked, I was a "she". Sign me, The woman at the bottom of this web page ... http://nodevice.com/sections/ManIndex/man0530.html === Subject: Re: groupadd -o??????????????? From: kumar1@home.com (Prasanth A. Kumar) Date: 23 Aug 2000 23:39:50 -0700 I looked at the source code for useradd in the shadow-utils package and it appears the -o flag permits non-unique user IDs to be specified with the -u flag so there can be multiple account names with the same user id in the password file. === Subject: Re: groupadd -o??????????????? From: "Mike A. Harris" <mharris@meteng.on.ca> Date: Thu, 24 Aug 2000 15:15:32 -0400 (EDT) On Thu, 24 Aug 2000, Peter Blomgren wrote: >Maybe I'm too used to reading cryptic man pages, but this one >seems pretty clear to me... Well it wasn't to me until someone pointed it out. Thanks to all that pointed this out to me. >> The groupadd command lists a "-o" option. >> >> SYNOPSIS >> groupadd [-g gid [-o]] [-r] [-f] group >> [SNIP] >> -g gid The numerical value of the group's ID. This value >> must be unique, unless the -o option is used. > >Hence, 'groupadd -g 0 haXX0r' will fail (groupadd: gid 0 is not unique), >but 'groupadd -g 0 -o haXX0r' will successfully add the group haXX0r >with gid=0 (as an alias for the "root" group). Right, I got it now. >> [SNIP] >> -f [SNIP] This option also modifies the way -g option works. >> When you request a gid that it is not unique and >> you don't give -o option too, the group creation >> will fall back to the standard behavior (adding a >[UNSNIP] group as neither -g or -o options were specified). >[UNSNIP] This is an option added by Red Hat Software. > >Hence, 'groupadd -g 0 -f haxx0r' will add the group haxx0r, with >a GID is that in _new_ AND _unique_ (gid>500 unless the "-r" option >is given, in which case gid<500...). >Finally 'groupadd -g 0 -o -f haxx0r' is equivalent to >'groupadd -g 0 -o haxx0r' since there is nothing to force. Yep, I got that now too. The message learned here is that just because documentation exists, doesn't mean it is well written at all. The defacto standard for manpages and other documentation when listing command line options seems to be: -a does this -b does that -f blah blah -o is this When I saw "-o" on the commandline, I looked in the manpage. I read the whole thing once over, but when I spotted the "-o" option reference in the above for -f and -g, I looked for "-o" documentation below which was a very intuitive and natural thing to look for. Not finding it, means either: 1) it is not documented 2) it is documented poorly and non-intuitively. In this case the latter is true. Consider an application having 50 commanline options for example. It makes the most sense they'd be listed in the manpage in alphabetical order. Starting off not knowing what ANY of them do, and being told to use "-o" you'd scroll down the page looking for "-o" most likely, and not find it under "-z" because you weren't looking for -z. As long as the GNU manpages and info documents expect you to read the entire manual and then try to interpret it in 30 different ways, people will not in general be able to grok what they are saying. I'm reading a lot more docs lately than normal, and I'm finding things increasingly poorly written or referenced. Pointing that out to people though you often get back a response saying "why don't you fix it then?". Pretty hard to fix documentation that you don't understand though. A paradox at best... <sigh> Well, thanks for your explanation.. I have it klunked into my thinker now. ;o) Once again, we've proved here, the best documentation is the human experience. (and mailing lists). ;o) Take care, TTYL ===