Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 16:31:20 +0100 From: nik@iii.co.uk To: David Wolfskill <dhw@whistle.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Group ownership (WHY : or .) Message-ID: <19980825163120.A7512@iii.co.uk> In-Reply-To: <199808251442.HAA22599@pau-amma.whistle.com>; from David Wolfskill on Tue, Aug 25, 1998 at 07:42:33AM -0700 References: <35E2373E.F4757D70@aei.ca> <199808251442.HAA22599@pau-amma.whistle.com>
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On Tue, Aug 25, 1998 at 07:42:33AM -0700, David Wolfskill wrote:
> Before responding, I had checked the man page for chown, which specifies
> the "newuser:newgroup" syntax. Although the "newuser.newgroup" syntax
> was one I had used previously (on SunOS systems), I didn't try it, since
> the man page specified otherwise.
Both of them work.
> >Why there is both version?
>
> I suspect that's a question with an answer based in history....
You can have a '.' in your username, you can't have a ':'. From passwd(5);
The login name must never begin with a hyphen (``-''); also, it is
strongly suggested that neither upper-case characters or dots (``.'') be
part of the name, as this tends to confuse mailers. No field may contain
a colon (``:'') as this has been used historically to separate the fields
in the user database.
I can remember this biting me when I moved from SunOS to Solaris.
N
--
--+==[ Nik Clayton becomes Just Another Perl Contractor in 18 days. ]==+--
She's still dead. Deal with it.
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