Comment 1 for bug 372695

Revision history for this message
FernanAguero (fernan-ciudad) wrote : Re: create new user account silently fails

Also, if you add a user and then delete it, you can never add it back again.

How to reproduce it.

1. Create a new user, and close the Users and Groups utility

username: test
userid: 1030

Log out from your admin account, and log in with your test account, just to check that everything works fine.
Log out from your test account and log back in as an admin.

2. Delete the test account with the Users and Groups utility, and try to create a 'test' user again, if you want you can close and open the Users and Groups utility again.

It tells you that you cannot add a 'test' user because it already exists.

3. Just to recheck that this is a bug.

The home folder for this user is still there, which may prevent us from creating a user with this name, so we delete it:

sudo rm -rf /home/test

Also we check if /etc/passwd refers to this account:

grep -c test /etc/passwd
0

No traces left from the 'test' user (or so it seems), however, the Users and Groups utility still doesn't allow us to create this account 'because it already exists'

Current problems with this utility:

I cannot fix a mistake:
What if I made a mistake and want to bring this user back to life?

The utility does not help me get rid of all files referenced or referring to this account:
What if I really want to create a new, fresh account with this same username/userid combination?