Arch Linux

stefan1975

Member

From: 53 6e 65 65 6b

Registered: 2007-04-16

Posts: 195

add users with "." (dots) in the user names

Hi,

i just switched my server from fedora to Arch and found that I cannot recreate the users the way they were. On Fedora I had created users like so:

{firstname}.{lastname}

however Arch for some reason will not let met create usernames with dots "."  in them. Any reason for this, and can this be changed?

thx,
stefan

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"root# su - bofh"
OS: F10_x64, Arch, Centos5.3, RHEL4.7, RHEL5.3
Desktop Hardware: Dell Precision M65 laptop, core2duo, 2gb, 80gb 7200rpm
Registered linux user #459910 since 1998

Shodan

Member

From: Finland

Registered: 2008-08-25

Posts: 30

Re: add users with "." (dots) in the user names

man useradd:

Usernames must begin with a lower case letter or an underscore, and only lower case letters, 
underscores, dashes, and dollar signs may follow. 
In regular expression terms: [a-z_][a-z0-9_-]*[$]

stefan1975

Member

From: 53 6e 65 65 6b

Registered: 2007-04-16

Posts: 195

Re: add users with "." (dots) in the user names

yes, i knew already that it doesn't work and why. The fact that it does not accept the "dots" is obvious.

What i want to know is how to work around this and why this would differ in "useradd" from rhel/centos/fedora to Arch. On all windows servers and rhel-family servers we use {firstname}.{lastname} without issues and it would suck if users have to remember a different loginname for this one computer (besides it sucks when you have to use {username}@archserver when using ssh).

fedora:

[root@galactica ~]# grep stefan /etc/passwd
stefan.van.ramen:x:500:500:stefan:/home/stefan.van.ruiten:/bin/bash

stefan

---

"root# su - bofh"
OS: F10_x64, Arch, Centos5.3, RHEL4.7, RHEL5.3
Desktop Hardware: Dell Precision M65 laptop, core2duo, 2gb, 80gb 7200rpm
Registered linux user #459910 since 1998

Ranguvar

Member

Registered: 2008-08-12

Posts: 2,549

Re: add users with "." (dots) in the user names

I don't know. It's not a good idea in any case -- if traditional Unix accounts can't contain periods, I wouldn't do it even if one distro lets you. I'm guessing you used graphical tools in those distros that created the accounts, then, and those graphical tools don't use useradd as the backend.

stefan1975

Member

From: 53 6e 65 65 6b

Registered: 2007-04-16

Posts: 195

Re: add users with "." (dots) in the user names

I don't know. It's not a good idea in any case -- if traditional Unix accounts can't contain periods, I wouldn't do it even if one distro lets you. I'm guessing you used graphical tools in those distros that created the accounts, then, and those graphical tools don't use useradd as the backend.

graphical tools? what are those? of course I only use the cli :-) All those acccounts (160+) have been created using plain old "useradd".

stefan

---

"root# su - bofh"
OS: F10_x64, Arch, Centos5.3, RHEL4.7, RHEL5.3
Desktop Hardware: Dell Precision M65 laptop, core2duo, 2gb, 80gb 7200rpm
Registered linux user #459910 since 1998

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: add users with "." (dots) in the user names

Fedora must have patched it then, for whatever reason. Maybe you could do the same, and create your own patched shadow package.

Nezmer

Member

Registered: 2008-10-24

Posts: 559

Website

Re: add users with "." (dots) in the user names

Fedora must have patched it then

Indeed .
http://cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewvc/rpm … iew=markup

Last edited by Nezmer (2009-04-15 12:11:12)

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English is not my native language .

Xiong Chiamiov

Member

From: central coast, california

Registered: 2008-06-18

Posts: 142

Website

Re: add users with "." (dots) in the user names

Fedora must have patched it then

Indeed .
http://cvs.fedoraproject.org/viewvc/rpm … iew=markup

Because "improving" packages via monkey-patch is always a good idea.

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