should be prevented from adding 'admin' as user
| Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| gnome-system-tools (Ubuntu) |
New
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
Bug Description
Binary package hint: gnome-system-tools
'admin' is, in effect, a reserved word. It has special meaning in the management of access privileges in the Ubuntu distribution.
For example, a user, when a member of the group 'admin', is via /etc/sudoers, given permission to use the sudo command.
For most users it doesn't make sense to be able to add a user 'admin' and thus it should not be possible for the "users and groups" visual tool to add 'admin' as a user.
Background:
As a 'casual' administrator (not knowing then what I do now!) of an Ubuntu system (release Hardy Heron)
I did this and locked my administrator out after I deleted the user 'admin' and the relationship between the administrator and the 'admin' group was removed as a side-effect. The user group 'admin' remained but the administrator was no longer a member of it.
The remedy was to boot in as root and "adduser <amdinistrator> admin" but I feel most users shouldn't be faced with this problem and that the visual tool at least should generate a warning (I doubt whether this is appropriate behaviour for command adduser, though) and preferably not accept the addition of 'admin' as a valid user name.
| description: | updated |
