users-admin doesn't add "administrative" users to sudo group

[Matthew]

New "administrative" user accounts created with users-admin aren't added to the sudo group. Prior versions added administrative users to the admin group (which no longer exists in 12.04) rather than the sudo group, which had the same effect in granting sudo permissions. This means that so-called administrative accounts cannot perform administrative tasks without first being manually added to /etc/group.

If a new administrative account is created and the account that was created during installation is deleted, the user is effectively permanently unable to perform any kind of administrative tasks.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: gnome-system-tools 3.0.0-2ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-24.38-generic 3.2.16
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-24-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu7
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue May 22 15:49:20 2012
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120425)
SourcePackage: gnome-system-tools
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Matthew (astrochase)]

In addition, if there is only one administrative account, the Authentication dialog (policykit-1-gnome) no longer specifies which administrative account's password is being requested. This means that if I'm logged into an administrative account that hasn't been granted sudo privileges (but there is another account on the system that has) the Authentication dialog will reject the password for the current account and it's not obvious that it's really requesting the password for that other account.

[Matthew (astrochase)]

This also has the side effect that users-admin will allow deletion of the last remaining true administrator account. Administrative accounts are presumably considered such due to their membership in the adm group, but newly created administrative accounts lack such privileges. users-admin will then happily attempt to remove all other administrative accounts that actually do have admin permissions, such as the account created during installation. (The account won't properly be removed however due to bug #1002700.)

I'm not sure that this should be filed as a new bug as it appears to be a side effect of this bug.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.