Cannot Create firstname.lastname in Redhat 9.0
 

I cannot create users in linux redhat 9.0 using firstname.lastname format, any users I try to create it throws up an error.

I can edit the passwd or shadow file manually and create the user entry and home dirs but when I go to change password as root it fails.

I need to create the user with the dot in it so it is consitent with our NT domains.

I think this is a known bug in Redhat 9.0, anyone else come across this, is there a fix for this???

Thanks

Simon

Hmmm,
[root@localhost root]# redhat-config-users
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/share/redhat-config-users/userWindow.py", line 294, in on_userWin_ok_button_clicked
self.parent.ADMIN.addGroup(groupEnt)
RuntimeError: name contains invalid char `.'

Well, it happens in Redhat 8.0 as well. Is this something that Linux/Unix supports? a '.' in a username. No experience, but you may simply have to contend with firstname_lastname

From
http://www.udel.edu/help/unixacct.html
it states

UNIX Username (User ID) -
format: 2-8 lowercase letters - no spaces, numbers or punctuation
marks

There must be a reason.

RO

bug
 

I think I read somewhere that this is a bug in Redhat 9 but not sure if it is the case.

It should not matter to have a dot in your userid, I find this a bit silly to have to login to NT with firstname.lastname and then have to use a completely different account id in linux, I would expect to be a able to use firstname.lastname there too preferably with the same password.

Since I have a samba server setup to share out a linux share to Windows NT users it is not very good to switch user ids to firstname_lastname as they login to win2k as firstname.lastname with a dot.

Regards

Simon

Inspiration. Start a new thread with 'Can some running other than Redhat add user as test.name userid'.

RO

I haven;t found a way to do it with any gui or cli tools but you can manually add entries or use a comamnd to add with an underscore then change it in the password files.

works fine in rh7.3...

user account with a period
 

David,

That is true I can create user id manually etc but the password is encrypted so you have to do a bit of jiggery pockery with copy and paste to get the password in encrypted form from say the underlined user to the .user but when it comes to the user changing password again it would fail as it would again try and validate the account and find the dot.

I mean it is not practical, the only way is I would have to change password everytime which defeats the object of keeping it secret.:o

Regards

Simon

user with dot and samba
 

Also when you have samba running like me then you are using a different file for samba and it also fails to modify the samba passwd file and it is not similiar to the etc/passwd file so this user with the period does not work in samba.