[Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#364909: useradd: confusion in man page; suggested fix

[Reuben Thomas]

Package: passwd
Version: 1:4.0.14-9
Severity: minor


The man page for useradd says:

       On Debian, the constraints on the username are lowered:
       Usernames must neither start by a dash ('-') nor contain a
       colon (':') or an end of line ('\n'). However, it is
       usually recommended to only use usernames that begin with a
       lower case letter or an underscore, and are only followed by
       lower case letters, underscores, dashes, and dollar signs. In
       regular expression terms: [a-z_][a-z0-9_-]*[$]

Problems:

1. It's not clear what "lowered" means. Are the restrictions less or
   greater on Debian? I suggest "loosened" or "tightened"
   appropriately.

2. The regex includes decimal digits, but you don't mention those in
   the text. The regex also suggests that the user name MUST end with
   a dollar character. What are you trying to say? That a dollar may
   appear, but only once and at the end? I suggest i) that you change
   "followed by lower case letters" to "followed by lower case
   letters, digits", and ii) that you sort out the regex (I can't
   since I don't know what you mean!).

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.15.rrt
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)

Versions of packages passwd depends on:
ii  debianutils                   2.15.3     Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii  libc6                         2.3.6-7    GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libpam-modules                0.79-3.1   Pluggable Authentication Modules f
ii  libpam0g                      0.79-3.1   Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libselinux1                   1.30-1     SELinux shared libraries
ii  login                         1:4.0.14-9 system login tools

passwd recommends no packages.

-- debconf information:
* passwd/password-mismatch:
  passwd/root-password-crypted: (password omitted)
* passwd/username: rrt
  passwd/password-empty:
  passwd/md5: false
  passwd/user-uid:
* passwd/shadow: true
  passwd/username-bad:
* passwd/user-fullname: Reuben Thomas
* passwd/make-user: true
  passwd/title:
  passwd/root-password-empty:
  passwd/user-password-crypted: (password omitted)