Open Radar

 
Area:
Something not on this list

Summary:
The output of a successful `sysadminctl` is directed to stderr rather than stdout. This is atypical behaviour for command line binaries that is unexpected.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open up Terminal.app
2. Elevate privileges to equivalent of root using `sudo -s` and supply appropriate password.
3. Start an interactive python session with `python`
4. Use the following code to create a test account. Substitute for a valid UID for the account that is free on the test machine. In this case it is 504.
[test_macOS:~] # python
Python 2.7.10 (default, Jul 15 2017, 17:16:57) 
[GCC 4.2.1 Compatible Apple LLVM 9.0.0 (clang-900.0.31)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import subprocess
>>> cmd = ['/usr/sbin/sysadminctl', '-addUser', 'test', '-fullName', 'test account', '-password', 'test_password', '-home', '/Users/test', '-UID', '504']
>>> (result, error) = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE).communicate()
>>> result
''
>>> error
'2017-09-05 13:15:17.155 sysadminctl[4918:25366] ----------------------------\n2017-09-05 13:15:17.155 sysadminctl[4918:25366] No clear text password or interactive option was specified (adduser, change/reset password will not allow user to use FDE) !\n2017-09-05 13:15:17.155 sysadminctl[4918:25366] ----------------------------\n2017-09-05 13:15:17.209 sysadminctl[4918:25366] Creating user record\xe2\x80\xa6\n2017-09-05 13:15:18.538 sysadminctl[4918:25366] Assigning UID: 504\n2017-09-05 13:15:18.657 sysadminctl[4918:25366] Home directory is assigned (not created!) at /Users/test\n'
>>> 


This is also confirmed by using a redirect of stderr like so:
[test_macOS:~] # /usr/sbin/sysadminctl -addUser test2 -fullName Test2 -password test_password2 -home /Users/test2 -UID 504 2> stderr_output.txt
[test_macOS:~] # less stderr_output.txt
2017-09-05 13:19:38.766 sysadminctl[5116:26342] ----------------------------
2017-09-05 13:19:38.766 sysadminctl[5116:26342] No clear text password or interactive option was specified (adduser, change/reset password will not allow user to use FDE) !
2017-09-05 13:19:38.766 sysadminctl[5116:26342] ----------------------------
2017-09-05 13:19:38.822 sysadminctl[5116:26342] Creating user record  
2017-09-05 13:19:40.164 sysadminctl[5116:26342] Assigning UID: 504
2017-09-05 13:19:40.176 sysadminctl[5116:26342] ### Error:-14135 File:/BuildRoot/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/Admin/Admin-670/DSRecord.m Line:418
2017-09-05 13:19:40.283 sysadminctl[5116:26342] Home directory is assigned (not created!) at /Users/test2
stderr_output.txt (END)

Expected Results:
The result should be stored in `result` which is `stdout` output.

Actual Results:
The result is stored in `error` which is `stderr`.

Version/Build:
macOS 10.12.6 (16G29) and all builds of macOS 10.13

Configuration:
N/A