Heya, some packages in the openSUSE distribution do this (or equivalent) in their %post section: %post getent passwd user >/dev/null || useradd user || : darix says this is against policy (what a killer argument), but closely looking at what is happening, getent is just what is desired. If getent were not used, useradd would throw a warning whenever the user already exists, which would be the case on all upgrade attempts of such packages. So people slap in useradd user 2>/dev/null || : instead, but that hides real errors that do not stem from a preexisting user. So, with getent, one can check whether the user already exists and not call useradd if so; otherwise do create the user, and NOT drop any stderr messages. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+help@opensuse.org