[Adduser-devel] Bug#283110: adduser won't add usernames containing dots

[Jesús M. Navarro]

Package: adduser
Version: 3.59
Severity: important

Hi:

This is the behaviour:

mithrandir:~# adduser john.doe
adduser: Please enter a username consisting of a lower case letter
followed by lower case letters and numbers.  Use the `--force-badname'
option to allow underscores, and uppercase.

mithrandir:~# adduser --force-badname john.doe
adduser: To avoid problems, the username should consist of a letter or
underscore followed by letters, digits, underscores, and dashes. For
compatibility with Samba machine accounts $ is also supported at the
end of the username
mithrandir:~#

Still, useradd will gladly add these kind of usernames.  For all I know,
usernames containing dots used to be POSIX illegal, but they are illegal no
more.  chmod, for instance, will allow `chmod user:group whatever`
syntax (using colon instead of dot-separating old notation) just for this very reason.
Since this bug impedes adding a legal (so I think) username, I think this
deserves the "important" level.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i586)
Kernel: Linux 2.4.26-nav03
Locale: LANG=es_ES@euro, LC_CTYPE=es_ES@euro (ignored: LC_ALL set to es_ES@euro)

Versions of packages adduser depends on:
ii  debconf                     1.4.30.10    Debian configuration management sy
ii  passwd                      1:4.0.3-30.3 Change and administer password and
ii  perl-base                   5.8.4-3      The Pathologically Eclectic Rubbis

-- debconf information:
* adduser/homedir-permission: true