problem adding user name with "\" into a group

icejam · 05-10-2006, 08:58 PM

Dear all,

My RHEL4 is having users like "SCI\john" and "LAW\susan".

Since I could change the ownership on directories by doing:

Code:

chown 'SCI\john' /home/SCI/john/

but if I want to assign users into groups, i faced a problem.

Code:

root:x:0:root
bin:x:1:root,bin,daemon
daemon:x:2:root,bin,daemon
sys:x:3:root,bin,adm
adm:x:4:root,adm,daemon
private:x:502:'SCI\john','LAW\susan'

I tried both 'SCI\john' with and without the quotation marks but neither worked!

I would reall appreciate any advice.

Thanks

gilead · 05-10-2006, 09:48 PM

I haven't tested this, but have you tried escaping the slash?

Code:

private:x:502:SCI\\john,LAW\\susan

Or, you might be able to use an underscore '_' instead of the slash.

icejam · 05-10-2006, 11:34 PM

Just tried it and it didn't work out...
I'm not allowed to escape the slash nor replace it by '_' because the user list sticks with samba which is a user list in the windows server directory.
sigh~~

gilead · 05-10-2006, 11:44 PM

Ouch - sorry I couldn't help.

icejam · 05-11-2006, 11:25 PM

anyone knows how to handle that nasty back slash?.......

reddazz · 05-12-2006, 02:03 AM

Usernames should only contain alphanumeric characters. Some systems will work fine with usernames that contain a dot or underscore. Anything else is looking for trouble as you have noticed.