Stupid Ubuntu 8.10

[Erik Christiansen]

On Mon, Nov 10, 2008 at 08:05:09PM -0800, NoOp wrote:
> But I just tested and answered my own question as vafa.vafa (or
> test.test in my case) doesn't work on Ubuntu when adding a new user; it
> gives a warning with "User name has invalid characters" so it's probably
> a mute point w/regard to Ubuntu. So I bow to the 'old scripter's' :-) &
> thanks for the pointer (pun intended :-).

Since the 'old scripter's' are ahead, I shouldn't even potentially
weaken our case by admitting that it is possible to add a NAME_REGEX
entry to /etc/adduser.conf, to admit dotty names, according to the
adduser.conf manpage. There is, however, no such entry on my 7.10
ubuntu, so "The default is the most conservative ^[a-z][-a-z0-9]*$",
i.e. not even uppercase. (And no-one would nowadays edit /etc/passwd,
as we regularly did last century, before adduser or even /etc/shadow
existed.)

And I trust that adduser's "--force-badname" option is listed under
"COMMON OPTIONS" due to being shared, not due to frequency of use. ;-)
(Incidentally my adduser manpage incorrectly states that --system also
uses NAME_REGEX. That should be NAME_REGEX_SYSTEM, clearly. Does anyone
have an Ibex, to check whether that's fixed now?)

But I have to agree, a novice user won't get into trouble, since he
won't have a dot in the username.

Erik

-- 
Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you.
Their tastes may not be the same.
                                     -- George Bernard Shaw