Bug#639899: libnss-extrausers: shadow not enumerable with getent, and returns '0' for blank fields

Package: libnss-extrausers
Version: 0.3-1
Severity: normal

with libnss-extrausers installed and /etc/nsswitch.conf containing:

shadow: compat extrausers

i see some weird behavior:

0) "getent passwd" provides full enumeration of /etc/passwd and
/var/lib/extrausers/passwd, but "getent shadow" returns only the
contents of /etc/shadow. "getent shadow foo" works to return lines
from /var/lib/extrausers/shadow, though.

1) "getent shadow foo" converts blank fields from extrausers/shadow
to fields containing '0', unlike data from /etc/shadow. Compare:

0 root@spice:~# grep ^foo: /etc/shadow /var/lib/extrausers/shadow
/var/lib/extrausers/shadow:foo:*:15000:0:99999:7:::
0 root@spice:~# getent shadow foo
foo:*:15000:0:99999:7:0:0:0
0 root@spice:~# grep ^statd: /etc/shadow /var/lib/extrausers/shadow
/etc/shadow:statd:*:14776:0:99999:7:::
0 root@spice:~# getent shadow statd
statd:*:14776:0:99999:7:::
0 root@spice:~#

This is problematic because as shadow(5) says in its description of
the 8th field ("account expiration date"):

An empty field means that the account will never expire.

The value 0 should not be used as it is interpreted as either an
account with no expiration, or as an expiration on Jan 1, 1970.


Thanks for maintaining libnss-extrausers in debian!

Regards,


Debian Release: squeeze
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash



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