[Adduser-devel] Bug#520037: adduser: could --force-badname permit non-ASCII usernames?

[Colin Watson]

Package: adduser
Version: 3.110
Severity: wishlist
User: ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
Usertags: origin-ubuntu jaunty

I've been trying to figure out what to do with a very old Ubuntu bug,
namely https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/23475. The complaint in this bug
is that non-ASCII usernames may not be used during installation. Now, I
think this is probably to be discouraged, and I certainly intend to put
a note in the installer if you try saying that you may encounter
problems with using your username in network services and the like
rather than just letting people proceed without a warning, but I do
think people should be allowed to try this given that it should mostly
work OK on the local system. Unfortunately, adduser doesn't permit
non-ASCII usernames even if you use --force-badname.

The only record I can find of why this might be the case is in this old
Debian bug:

  http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=42874

There, Roland Bauerschmidt says "The --force-badname option only allows
usernames that are also accepted by useradd". However, 'useradd håkan'
(the example in the bug report) works just fine. Therefore, I think that
'adduser --force-badname' should also permit non-ASCII usernames. Does
this make sense?

Thanks,

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]