system users with dot in the name

[shrek-m at gmx.de]

Tommy Reynolds wrote:

>Uttered Douglas Furlong <douglas.furlong at firebox.com>, spake thus:
>
>>However I have read some suggest "."'s in the name may be a very bad
>>thing.
>>

my opinion:
a  "."  in the username is no bad thing
a  "@"  in the username, i do not need it

# useradd test at user
# userdel test at user

>> One example was the chown command, on some systems you could have
>>a user named John, and Group name Smith, and another user John.Smith.
>>    
>>
>The chown form "name.group" is now deprecated.
>
>The preferred form is
>now "name:group".
>

it was always  "user:group"
a few yeras agoo i have heard the first time about the possibility to use
"user.group"  instead  "user:group"


$ man chown
[...]
SYNOPSIS
       chown [OPTION]... OWNER[:[GROUP]] FILE...
       chown [OPTION]... :GROUP FILE...



afaik under rhl <= 7.3 it was no problem to use dot_named_users:

?? is it in bugzilla ??



# cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Linux release 7.3 (Valhalla)


# useradd test.user


# passwd test.user
Changing password for user test.user.
New password:
BAD PASSWORD: it's WAY too short
Retype new password:
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.


# grep test.user /etc/passwd /etc/group
/etc/passwd:test.user:x:506:507::/home/test.user:/bin/bash
/etc/group:test.user:x:507:



# ll /home/ | grep test
drwx------    3 test.use test.use     4096 Mai 15 12:55 test.user


# mkdir te.us
# ll | grep te.us
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Mai 15 13:05 te.us

# chown test.user:test.user te.us/
# ll | grep te.us
drwxr-xr-x    2 test.use test.use     4096 Mai 15 13:05 te.us



# mail -sbla test.user
blubber