AW: AW: [suse-security] Problems creating usernames with dots
If you want/need to have system users with dots in their names, then this doesn't work. E. g., you have a system with two users Peter Meier and Peter Huber. Why not have system user names peter.meier and peter.huber? Why does it always have to be a dot? Ten years ago in Fido we used underscores, if I remember well, so the user names would be Peter_Meier and Peter_Huber. Or what about dashes? Or even no character (PeterMeier and PeterHuber)? But such long user names aren't shown completely when doing an "ls -la". Bye Uli -- Ulrich Roth IMPACT Business & Technology Consulting GmbH Im Mediapark 8 / KölnTurm D-50670 Koeln Phone +49-221-93 70 80-29 Fax +49-221-93 70 80-15 E-Mail: roth@impact.de
Am Donnerstag, 21. November 2002 10:32 schrieb Ulrich Roth:
If you want/need to have system users with dots in their names, then this doesn't work. E. g., you have a system with two users Peter Meier and Peter Huber. Why not have system user names peter.meier and peter.huber?
Why does it always have to be a dot? Ten years ago in Fido we used underscores, if I remember well, so the user names would be Peter_Meier and Peter_Huber. Or what about dashes? Or even no character (PeterMeier and PeterHuber)?
You're right - it doesn't have to be a dot. But my position is: there is no technical nor a logical reason that tells me not to use a dot. By the way, there might be situations where a dot in a username would be helpful: If your organisation already has accounts and login names that contain dots on other systems (often seen on Win32-based environments). For these users, it would be kind of comfortable to use the same account name on a Linux system, too.
But such long user names aren't shown completely when doing an "ls -la".
That's another problem of a userspace program, not of the login name. ;-) Bye Emmerich -- Emmerich Eggler Eggler Communications Wannerstrasse 3/39 CH-8045 Zürich Fon: 01 - 463 43 73 Mobile: 079 - 438 75 11
You're right - it doesn't have to be a dot. But my position >is: there is no technical nor a logical reason that tells me not to use a >dot. By the way, there might be situations where a dot in a username >would be helpful: If your organisation already has accounts and login names that >contain dots on other systems (often seen on Win32-based environments). For >these users, it would be kind of comfortable to use the same account name on >a Linux system, too.
That´s the point. I´m a ISP Admin and my users love creating usernames (for e-mails) with dots. It´s a kind of tradition. Thomas help with the alias problem in Qmail and I had already known that we can manually edit "/etc/passwd". But these are "manual" solutions, not a really good solution. At my point of view I agree with Emmerich, if the kernel doens´t care about it, Why the 'userland' programs don´t do the same? I´m going to check the useradd source code right now. Thank you. -- ========================= José Mário Viana ISP Network Admin SecrelNet ISP - Brazil =========================
On Thu, Nov 21, 2002 at 09:40:38AM -0200, Mario Viana wrote:
At my point of view I agree with Emmerich, if the kernel doens?t care about it, Why the 'userland' programs don?t do the same? I?m going to check the useradd source code right now. Thank you.
Two things - one, the kernel doesn't have a concept of user names. The kernel uses numeric uids; login names are user land only. Second, this is getting quite off-topic for suse-security, as it's not really security related anymore. Would you please take this discussion to a more appropriate forum? Thank you, Olaf -- Olaf Kirch | Anyone who has had to work with X.509 has probably okir@suse.de | experienced what can best be described as ---------------+ ISO water torture. -- Peter Gutmann
Two things - one, the kernel doesn't have a concept of user names. The kernel uses numeric uids; login names are user land only.
Ok.
Second, this is getting quite off-topic for suse-security, as it's not really security related anymore. Would you please take this discussion to a more appropriate forum?
That´s right, now I know that it´s not a security mechanism that can be disabled in Suse 8, as I thought at fist. Thanks a lot Olaf, -- ========================= José Mário Viana Analista de Sistemas SecrelNet Infomática Ltda =========================
participants (4)
-
Emmerich Eggler -
Mario Viana -
Olaf Kirch -
Ulrich Roth