FC and group names

[Nifty Hat Mitch]

On Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 09:27:15AM -0800, Mike McMullen wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I've noticed in FC1&2 that when you create groups it won't allow mixed case
> or all cap group names.
> 
> When I migrated from 7.3 and 9 to FC1&2, group names with mixed case came
> over just fine. It's only when adding new groups that I get the following error:
> 
> 
> groupadd: MyGroup is a not a valid group name
> 
> Anyone have any insight?

Hmmm insight.

It is common for NIS managers to fold all group names to lower case
(other maps like passwd too). I expect that older sites with NIS (once
was yp) (Sun and SGI systems for example) were finding some conflicts
and filed a bug/ rfe.  On a Sun/SGI ypmaster look for the -i flag in
the NIS master startup and Makefile scripts.

There are a number of problematic user and group name issues that
established sites have to cope with.  The tools enforce these for
historic (some are silly) reasons.  This may be one....

If it is very important to you file an RFE to add a config flag
"relax_case_check" or some such thing to this tool.

CAUTION: this is authentication stuff.  If it gets badly screwed up
you cannot login.  Consider, local files, (etc/group), NIS, LDAP,
Samba, backups, restore, ssh, sshd, etc when breaking the 'rules' 
at your site no matter how silly things appear at first.

Trivia: At one time if the first letter of a login was typed  upper
case the terminal handler was set to translate all upper case to
lower.  This historic login thing was to accommodate the old tty and
terminal devices that did not have mixed upper and lower case.  i.e.
there is a long tradition for lower case only (mono case may be a
better bias) that involves more than just touch typing.

See man stty:
   * [-]iuclc
              translate uppercase characters to lowercase

Summary: 
Grab the source and hack this specific sanity check out of the tool if
you understand the impact to you and want it gone.  Or edit the group
files by hand.


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