strange quota problem - wrong UIDs

[James Wilkinson]

Götz Reinicke wrote:

> recently I noticed, that we do have a problem with quota on some accounts.

> Our students have nummeric usernames like 010203 and there accounts are 
> generated "semiautomatically" by using the scriptfunktion of webmin.

As you've probably spotted by now, Unix has problems with all-numeric
usernames. Many programs will accept either a username or an (also
numeric) user-ID as a way of identifying a user.  If you have a username
that is the same as a user-id, you can't be sure which user the command
will think you meant.

To add to the problem, leading zeros often mean "this number is octal",
so 010203 may not be the number you think it is.

The real solution, unfortunately, is not to have all-numeric usernames.

James.

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