[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#779018: passwd: adding groups to a user with usermod: not possible

[phamming]

Package: passwd
Version: 1:4.1.5.1-1
Severity: important
Tags: upstream

Dear Maintainer,

I have some problems with usermod. The options -a returns the help screen, while it should append to the groups the user is belongs to. All other options work fine.
I don't know how long this problem exists, because I also use a different route to change group membership. Since this is the prefered way, it is important it is resolved. Usually I change groupmembership by manually changing /etc/group and /etc/gshadow and this works as expected. By the way I have tested the recommend approach on a fresh system with the same result, so this can not be the problem.
I don't know where this problem is introduced, if it is upstream or in Debian's sources.
I do know that it is architecture and locale independent, because besides the system I run reportbug on, I also have systems with x86 and armhf, and it does work on neither of them. Same for the locale.
I have tried to install passwd from unstable (and uninstalled it now), but there was the same problem, although this is not entirely reliable because I did not upgrade the entire system.
Also I have compiled it from (non Debian specific) source, which gave the same result.

Sincerely,

phamming

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.8
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (990, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
	Additional architectures: x86, armhf

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=nl_NL.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=nl_NL.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), C
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash, /bin/bash

Versions of packages passwd depends on:
ii  debianutils     4.3.2
ii  libc6           2.13-38+deb7u7
ii  libpam-modules  1.1.3-7.1
ii  libpam0g        1.1.3-7.1
ii  libselinux1     2.1.9-5
ii  libsemanage1    2.1.6-6

passwd recommends no packages.

passwd suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information