Quick question about valid username characters

[Alexander Dalloz]

Am Di, den 17.02.2004 schrieb Michael Kearey um 09:39:
> Hi There,
> 
> I have several multi-user machines running Redhat 8.0. There are 
> hundreds of usernames on these machines that have mixture of upper and 
> lowercase.
> 
> I may be able to just upgrade, but I would prefer to install new 
> Fedora, and automate adding the existing users on old Redhat 8.0 
> machines to new Fedora ones.. (Several reasons for doing this, but not 
> relevent here)
> 
> I have since discovered that Fedora (And Redhat of course) at some 
> stage changed , or maybe more properly, now enforces usernames to 
> allow only lowercase.
> 
> I'd like to know precise details :
> 
> Why the change?

I can not confirm that it was a change as I never used uppercase
letters, but I can say it was ever a good idea to use just lowercase
letters and no special signs. For problems with Sendmail using uppercase
letters in usernames see

http://www.sendmail.org/faq/section4.html#4.17

> Any simple way to circumvent the 'feature' (I know vipw allows you to 
> do it, but I need an automated way !!)
> 
> Is there a changelog anywhere in appropriate rpms that explain the change?
> 
> Any other advice and info would be much appreciated.
> 
> Cheers,
> Michael

Alexander


-- 
Alexander Dalloz | Enger, Germany | GPG key 1024D/ED695653 1999-07-13
Fedora GNU/Linux Core 1 (Yarrow) on Athlon CPU kernel 2.4.22-1.2166.nptl
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                   [ Γνωθι σ'αυτον - gnothi seauton ]