Level 1

64 points

SLS changing short/login name

I've seen this in other threads (at least on Apple's discussion board) and thought I had a temp fix, but it hit again today. When you add aliases to a user in Workgroup Manager, it can/has change the primary shortname for one of the aliases, thereby changing the short login name used for network logins, email login etc. It happened again today. I wasn't able to check my email because it wouldn't authenticate, I looked at WGM, and sure enough the primary (first in the list greyed out can't edit) shortname had been changed to one of the aliases I had added for email purposes, and my original shortname had been demoted to an alias.

Does anyone else know id Apple is aware of this? Does anyone had an actual fix?

Message was edited by: Corbywan

MBP (late 2008), iPhone 3G, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Nov 3, 2009 12:38 PM

31 replies

Corbywan Author

Level 1

64 points

Nov 4, 2009 11:03 AM in response to Scott Harwell

Nice find! I tried it and will see if it sticks.

Corbywan Author

Level 1

64 points

Nov 5, 2009 8:30 AM in response to Corbywan

Some more follow-up on this topic. Support is aware and tracking the issue of shortnames being reassigned and deleted when adding more than two or three (depending, not consistent) aliases/short names to an account. They are working on a fix. There temporary suggestion is to limit the number of aliases to as few as possible, no more than two for now. I'm guessing with all the seeding of 10.6.2 for client (and presumably a 10.6.2 for server for parity) that the fix won't be in 10.6.2, but in a subsequent intermediate patch (hopefully not 10.6.3!).

I am also being told that having a period in the primary short name is not supposed to be allowed, but having a period in an alias is no problem. This is why, in WGM, when you make a user you can't assign a period to that first short name. Why you can if you make a user in Server Preferences is unclear, you should not be able to despite what the documentation may say. But it's perfectly fine in aliases.

Enjoy!

Nov 5, 2009 8:33 AM in response to Corbywan

My findings are the same. The period issue is probably why the account "breaks" some services when it is swapped out. Also, I have no problem with users that have only one alias. So, I believe that our problems were the same.

Hands off those user accounts for now. 🙂

Corbywan Author

Level 1

64 points

Nov 5, 2009 8:37 AM in response to Corbywan

No kidding! I'm about to deploy my box so I'm actually going to nuke the few users I have setup (except for mine which I have been using live for testing thankfully) and setup them up from scratch. I need to use those period aliases because that was their email in our previous setup. But for my generic aliases I'm going to take them off of my account, make a generic contact account, add them there, and set all email to that account to forward to me. I needed to make this account anyway so I might as well do this with it!

Thanks for the help in confirming the issue and reproducing it. If I hear anything else from support I'll post it here.

nxnw

Level 2

233 points

Nov 5, 2009 9:58 AM in response to Corbywan

I suggest that the prudent course is to not put any aliases with periods in WGM, but to edit the /etc/postfix/aliases file instead. I was in the same boat, with legacy email addresses that all had periods.

If you are not accustomed to a CLI editor, textwrangler works perfectly. It can open and save files as root (it prompts you for username and password), which you would have to do in this case.

After the line: "# Put your local aliases here." you just list your aliases in the format <alias>:TAB <username>, i.e.

fred.flintstone: fredflintstone
barney.rubble: barneyrubble

After saving, use the following commands in the terminal (can't recall if the first two need "sudo":
postalias /etc/postfix/aliases
newaliases
sudo postfix reload

Corbywan Author

Level 1

64 points

Nov 5, 2009 2:20 PM in response to nxnw

nxnw - good call. I think that's what I'm going to have to do.

Corbywan Author

Level 1

64 points

Nov 11, 2009 7:26 AM in response to Corbywan

Known issue, still waiting to be resolved, but question answered.

Nov 11, 2009 11:15 AM in response to nxnw

I am using 10.6.2

Does anyone know if it is safe to add more than two aliases if the aliases are added via the command line? (postfix aliases file)

Also, has anyone replicated the issue with a CLEAN 10.6.2 install? (one that is at 10.6.2 before additional users are added via WGM)

Nov 11, 2009 11:17 AM in response to JT Harvey Jr.

Hi JT,

I've read in other listings that editing the postfix file should be ok. However, I have not tried myself. I plan to do this soon...but I wanted to do some research as well before trying.

I haven't tested the problem with a clean 10.6.2 install, but it is still happening on an updated server we have. I would not even try it until there is some word from Apple.

nxnw

Level 2

233 points

Nov 11, 2009 12:58 PM in response to JT Harvey Jr.

I have several individual users with many aliases in the postfix alias file. In fact, the unedited file has at least 10 aliases assigned to root.

Corbywan Author

Level 1

64 points

Nov 11, 2009 1:09 PM in response to Corbywan

I have found that adding postfix aliases has no impact on network users and their logins. It is my understanding that they are purely for email only. With user shortnames assigned in WGM those users can actually login using those shortnames. With postfix aliases they cannot, so they are isolated from from the other. Postfix aliases shouldn't have any impact. Shouldn't...

But I'm new.

mstade

Level 1

0 points

Nov 19, 2009 12:40 PM in response to JT Harvey Jr.

I can confirm that this is still an issue on 10.6.2. Bit me in the *** today infact.

Nov 19, 2009 12:48 PM in response to mstade

Yeap. In fact, I spoke with the Apple support technician about this two days ago who claimed that "engineering" can't reproduce the issue. I told him about our little forum post here and that I am clearly not the only one experiencing this issue. I don't think it's high on Apple's priority list though...

/sigh

Corbywan Author

Level 1

64 points

Nov 19, 2009 1:56 PM in response to Corbywan

Odd because the tech I worked with was able to reproduce it while we were on the phone together, and he told me (if I remember correctly) that he walked the people above him through the process who also observed it. I don't know if those were engineers or not, but they were able to do it.

jimi-b

Level 1

0 points

Jan 3, 2010 5:25 AM in response to Corbywan

Hi there,

just to inform you that the problem is still NOT solved in 10.6.2 !!
Apple, what are you doing ?!

I am used to using postfix-side configs, and add virtual users and aliases in postfix, not on the Mac side. But i noticed that sieve scripts (vacation for instance) do not work properly with postfix-declared aliases, but it does so for Mac-declared aliases. This is very strange as Apple (and common sense) advertise the opposite. Anyway, this is not the aim of this post...

Concernaing aliases on Mac OS X server 10.6, here is a workaround, that is to use the command line to modify the LDAP director through dscl

1) create users with only ONE (the default) short name

2) then list users just to make sure:

dscl /LDAPv3/127.0.0.1 list /Users

3) read the uid (short names) of the user (replace XXXXX by one of the usernames listed in step 2):

dscl /LDAPv3/127.0.0.1 read /Users/XXXXX uid

you should have only ONE short name, the default...

4) add short name aliases

dscl -u diradmin /LDAPv3/127.0.0.1 append /Users/XXXXX uid alias1@domain1.com alias2@domain2.org alias3@domain3.net ...

5) make sure everything worked fine:

dscl /LDAPv3/127.0.0.1 read /Users/XXXXX uid

Obviously, DO NOT reuse the WGM for adding aliases (or short names, whatever you prefer) until this is fixed ** apple, otherwise everything will be garbled again.

hope this helps
cheers

PS: now if anyone knows how to get the sieve vacation script to reply to the addresses declared on the postfix side and not only to the ones declared as short names on the Mac side, I would love to have their input.

Message was edited by: jimi-b

Message was edited by: jimi-b

Message was edited by: jimi-b

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SLS changing short/login name