[Adduser-devel] Bug#432562: adduser --system allow uppercase in usernames without --force-badname

[Ian Jackson]

Package: adduser
Version: 3.103

Several packages have started creating system users whose names
contain uppercase letters.  These names for system users have some
advantages over normal names, particularly:
 * It is easy to tell such a system user from a normal user even
   if it uses a normal-user-range uid and has a per-user group.
 * Mail delivery systems etc. typically won't deliver to such
   users (because they lowercase the name before lookup)
 * These names do not clash with names created for normal users
   because normal user-creation tools refuse to create them.
 * Most other tools behave properly with usernames containing
   capitals.

Currently packages that create system users with any uppercase letters
in the name need to pass --force-badname to adduser.  This is not
ideal; for example, it gives package maintainers the idea that a name
with a capital letter is not significantly better than one containing
punctuation, top-bit-set octets, etc.

I propose that we relax this restriction.  The attached patch causes
adduser to allow uppercase letters but only if --system is specified.
(This is achieved by a separate NAME_REGEX_SYSTEM config option.)

FYI, this is being deployed in Ubuntu as adduser 3.103ubuntu1.

Ian.

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