No support for "+" entries

Binary package hint: adduser

adduser doesn't have any support for "+" entries. Per Debian policy, programs (in this case the nis.deb) that aren't the primary responsibility of the config files (in this case /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, and /etc/group), are to be offered a program that modifies these entries. Adduser does these modifications, however, it doesn't support the "+" entries for NIS users.

For the Debian how-to of NIS, see http://lyre.mit.edu/~powell/debian-howto/nis.html
For the pertinent Debian Policy, see http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-files.html#s10.7.4

The desired effect would be that one can use adduser to create an entry such as the following:

/etc/passwd
+@admins
+goodguy:::::/home/goodguy:
-badguy::::::
+test::::::/usr/bin/zsh

Currently, the adduser and useradd programs will fail stating that the username has bad characters in it and will even suggest that the preceeding "-" in name is a bad thing, even though it's required when running NIS w/ compat.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Jun 20 12:51:24 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.10
NonfreeKernelModules: vmnet vmmon nvidia
Package: adduser 3.103ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: adduser
Uname: Linux homestead.cso.atmel.com 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Feb 12 02:46:46 UTC 2008 x86_64 GNU/Linux