NOT SPEAKING FOR RED HAT
...but quoting Bob Young: "The user has control."
Old aphorism, attribution escaping me just now: "Unix gives you enough
rope to hang yourself and a little bit more, just in case."
The reason for this is (I assume) a design consideration: design should
not dictate deployment. If you want to create uppercase usernames for
some valid reason, the system shouldn't stop you; but it is up to you to
understand the implications of your actions while administering the
system. If system designers put in warnings for every potential gotcha
out there, none of us (designers, programmers, admins, users) would ever
get anything else done.
In point of fact, Red Hat (and many of the current free Unices) are a
lot better than what I've seen of their commershix competitors when it
comes to warning you about obviously boneheaded maneuvers. Anybody ever
(try to) admin a SCO box? But like I said, it has to stop somewhere,
and in those cases where there _might_ be some reason why you'd want to
do something unorthodox, general Unix philosophy appears to be to err on
the side of trusting the system administrator.
This is bound to bite us all from time to time but there's yet another
aphorism (again, attribution is not my strong suit, it's probably in the
fortune files somewhere) to the effect that, if we outlaw all of the
unorthodox stuff, then we also put a stop to all of the innovative
stuff. So I usually try to Do The Boring Thing -- if everybody is doing
something a particular way and I can't figure out why or why not, I
follow along like a lemming until something changes my mind.
I'm thinking of changing my .sig to "I could of course be wildly wrong
in my details here."
--ReverendMikey
James wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Vidiot" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Friday, February 02, 2001 11:47 AM
> Subject: Re: Upper case user names
>
> > >At the risk of compromising my home LAN security, I have a user name on
> my
> > >RedHat box - "James." I know, I know, it's an odd choice for a user
> name,
> > >but I like it.
> >
> > Liking has nothing to do with it. You have to fit within the rules.
> >
> (snip)
> > As far as I know, whatever package you use will have the same "problem."
> > That is because of the standardization on user name space. That way
> anyone can
> > put whatever they want for a return address and it will get delivered.
> Whatever
> > they want case wise.
> >
> > Unless the rules have changed recently, you are stuck with "james."
> >
>
> OK, so "James" is an illegal username. I can live with that - but now I
> have a question for the occaisional RedHat staffer that I see on this list.
>
> Why didn't RedHat complain when I created the user? I created this
> particular user during the install, and created another one for my wife
> after the install. If there is a lower case only naming convention, perhaps
> there should at least be a warning message displayed stating that things
> like mail delivery won't work. It would help the newbies out a little.
>
> Perhaps something for 7.1?
>
> Cheers,
>
> James
>
> er, james I guess. (i guess??)
>
> _______________________________________________
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--
Michael Jinks, IB // Technical Entity // Saecos Corporation
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