I was trying to create an temporary account for users in a conference. The conference name begins with a digit (I don't give it here, for security reasons). So i tried to create a user account whose name begins with a digit : not allowed : adduser: invalid user name '3xxxxx'. Just a cosmetic problem in fact, but strange, no ? Workaround is very easy : just choose another login name ;-) Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. useradd -g users -d /home/9user -m 9user 2. 3. Actual Results: Error message : adduser: invalid user name '9user' Expected Results: It should have created the account properly. Portage 2.0.51.19 (default-linux/x86/2005.0/2.4, gcc-3.3.5, glibc-2.3.4.20041102-r1, 2.4.27 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.4.27 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz Gentoo Base System version 1.4.16 Python: dev-lang/python-2.3.4-r1 [2.3.4 (#1, Apr 4 2005, 17:52:46)] distcc 2.16 i686-pc-linux-gnu (protocols 1 and 2) (default port 3632) [enabled] dev-lang/python: 2.3.4-r1 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r6 sys-devel/automake: 1.5, 1.8.5-r3, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.4_p6, 1.9.4 sys-devel/binutils: 2.15.92.0.2-r1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.2-r7 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.8.1-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs autoconfig ccache distcc distlocks sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://ftp.belnet.be/mirror/rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo/ http://gentoo.mirror.sdv.fr" MAKEOPTS=" -j7" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 X apm arts avi berkdb bitmap-fonts crypt cups curl divx4linux doc emboss encode fam foomaticdb fortran gdbm gif gpm gtk2 imagemagick imlib jpeg kde ldap libg++ libwww mad mikmod mmx motif mp3 mpeg ncurses nls ogg oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib perl png python qt quicktime readline real samba sdl slang spell sse sse2 ssl svga tcpd tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts vorbis xml2 xmms xv xvid zlib" Unset: ASFLAGS, CBUILD, CTARGET, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY
manpage covers this: RESTRICTS Currently, the shadow suite enforces the following restrictions on user names: - must begin with a lower case letter or underscore - can only contain lower case letters, underscores, and dashes - may end with a dollar sign - regex for these requirements: [a-z_][a-z0-9_-$]*
