30 Dec 2005 senthilkumar   » (Observer)

Just checked how passwd command behaves when tried to change the passwd for a user who has two entries in /etc/passwd and the first one being commented. This I did in one of commercial distribution of unix and to my surprise it asks to change passwd for the commented user. I find tht somehow passwd command matches the first commented entry and prompts as below, Changing password for #senthil Old password:

Also at this juncture with the commercial version I checked the ownership of somefiles owned by user senthil. It displays as below, -rw------- 1 #senthil <grp> <file name>

But In Linux for same scenario, -rw------- 1 117 <grp> <file> (username replaced by uid)

In OpenBSD (its great and retains the username) -rw------- 1 senthil <grp> <file> (remain as it is)

So a common situation which give rise to 2 bugs.

I remember a quote, "Finding and fixing the bugs enhance the software". I think im not comfortable with PERL tht much and started making me good in that. This is the last working day of the Year 2005. Hey, Have FUN.

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