Re: About valid and invalid user names
On Sat, 05 Feb 2005, Bernd Eckenfels wrote:
> In article <[🔎] 20050205153241.GB26940@khazad-dum.debian.net> you wrote:
> > On Sat, 05 Feb 2005, Marc Haber wrote:
> >> adduser has two bug reports open where people are asking for user name
> >> rules to be relaxed. One report wants "." to be allowed in user names,
> >> another wants usernames to start with numbers.
> >
> > Allowing the dot is ok. I do think that usernames starting with numbers is
> > asking for total breakage, though.
>
> Why not make it an configurable RE? You cant avoid ppl breaking their
Because people will use it to enable users with start with a digit, since
they certainly don't know better or they would never have asked for this.
If I name an user "0", what is the expected result of chown 0 somefile ?
root or the new user "0"? For all programs out there?
Please don't give people this much rope to hang themselves with *so easily*.
> systems, but you can help them to enforce their policy. For example : may be
> fine on non-passwd systems (however some tools will have trouble with that).
: is not fine because it is not POSIX. Other stuff might croak very hard on
: it.
> chown was recently fixed to allow . in usernames, no?
Because '.' is POSIX, thus valid. And not accepting the '.' is a damn
bug in any POSIX-compliant utility.
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique Holschuh
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