From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Jan 11 19:35:29 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mailgw01.execpc.com (mailgw01.execpc.com [169.207.2.78]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B9D4F14E92 for ; Tue, 11 Jan 2000 19:35:21 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from hamilton@pobox.com) Received: from woodstock.monkey.net (planetx-2-89.mdm.mkt.execpc.com [169.207.119.217]) by mailgw01.execpc.com (8.9.1) id VAA24300; Tue, 11 Jan 2000 21:34:53 -0600 Received: from pobox.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by woodstock.monkey.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8907D148; Tue, 11 Jan 2000 21:37:56 -0600 (CST) X-Mailer: exmh version 2.1.1 10/16/1999 To: Shawn Ramsey Cc: cjclark@home.com, questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: periods in usernames? In-reply-to: Your message of "Tue, 11 Jan 2000 19:09:19 PST." <4.2.0.58.20000111190757.01bce940@mail.cpl.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2000 21:37:56 -0600 From: Jon Hamilton Message-Id: <20000112033756.8907D148@woodstock.monkey.net> Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In message <4.2.0.58.20000111190757.01bce940@mail.cpl.net>, Shawn Ramsey wrote: } At 09:03 PM 1/11/00 -0500, you wrote: } >Shawn Ramsey wrote, } > > Is there any particular reason the adduser script will not accept periods } > > in user accounts? } > } >'Cause the documentation says so. From adduser(1), } > } >. } >. } >. } >RESTRICTIONS } > username } > Login name. May contain only lowercase characters or digits. } } Uh, yeah, but my question was more along the lines of WHY it was written } this way. :) Is this any reason user names should not have a period? Im } sure the script would be easy enough to modify to accept a period. It used to be (and still is, on some UNIXen) that chown would accept "dot notation" to also do a chgrp; in other words, $ chown user.group /tmp/blat would change the owner and group on /tmp/blat. Many implementations have since changed their chown to use user:group instead, which is safer, but for compatibility reasons, using dots in usernames is not recommended. -- Jon Hamilton hamilton@pobox.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message