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+---
+title: User/Group Name Syntax
+category: Users, Groups and Home Directories
+layout: default
+SPDX-License-Identifier: LGPL-2.1-or-later
+---
+
+# User/Group Name Syntax
+
+The precise set of allowed user and group names on Linux systems is weakly
+defined. Depending on the distribution a different set of requirements and
+restrictions on the syntax of user/group names are enforced — on some
+distributions the accepted syntax is even configurable by the administrator. In
+the interest of interoperability systemd enforces different rules when
+processing users/group defined by other subsystems and when defining users/groups
+itself, following the principle of "Be conservative in what you send, be
+liberal in what you accept". Also in the interest of interoperability systemd
+will enforce the same rules everywhere and not make them configurable or
+distribution dependent. The precise rules are described below.
+
+Generally, the same rules apply for user as for group names.
+
+## Other Systems
+
+* On POSIX the set of [valid user
+  names](https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap03.html#tag_03_437)
+  is defined as [lower and upper case ASCII letters, digits, period,
+  underscore, and
+  hyphen](https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap03.html#tag_03_282),
+  with the restriction that hyphen is not allowed as first character of the
+  user name. Interestingly no size limit is declared, i.e. in neither
+  direction, meaning that strictly speaking, according to POSIX, both the empty
+  string is a valid user name as well as a string of gigabytes in length.
+
+* Debian/Ubuntu based systems enforce the regular expression
+  `^[a-z][-a-z0-9]*$`, i.e. only lower case ASCII letters, digits and
+  hyphens. As first character only lowercase ASCII letters are allowed. This
+  regular expression is configurable by the administrator at runtime
+  though. This rule enforces a minimum length of one character but no maximum
+  length.
+
+* Upstream shadow-utils enforces the regular expression
+  `^[a-z_][a-z0-9_-]*[$]$`, i.e. is similar to the Debian/Ubuntu rule, but
+  allows underscores and hyphens, but the latter not as first character. Also,
+  an optional trailing dollar character is permitted.
+
+* Fedora/Red Hat based systems enforce the regular expression of
+  `^[a-zA-Z0-9_.][a-zA-Z0-9_.-]{0,30}[a-zA-Z0-9_.$-]?$`, i.e. a size limit of
+  32 characters, with upper and lower case letters, digits, underscores,
+  hyphens and periods. No hyphen as first character though, and the last
+  character may be a dollar character. On top of that, `.` and `..` are not
+  allowed as user/group names.
+
+* sssd is known to generate user names with embedded `@` and white-space
+  characters, as well as non-ASCII (i.e. UTF-8) user/group names.
+
+* winbindd is known to generate user/group names with embedded `\` and
+  white-space characters, as well as non-ASCII (i.e. UTF-8) user/group names.
+
+Other operating systems enforce different rules; in this documentation we'll
+focus on Linux systems only however, hence those are out of scope. That said,
+software like Samba is frequently deployed on Linux for providing compatibility
+with Windows systems; on such systems it might be wise to stick to user/group
+names also valid according to Windows rules.
+
+## Rules systemd enforces
+
+Distilled from the above, below are the rules systemd enforces on user/group
+names. An additional, common rule between both modes listed below is that empty
+strings are not valid user/group names.
+
+Philosophically, the strict mode described below enforces an allow list of
+what's allowed and prohibits everything else, while the relaxed mode described
+below implements a deny list of what's not allowed and permits everything else.
+
+### Strict mode
+
+Strict user/group name syntax is enforced whenever a systemd component is used
+to register a user or group in the system, for example a system user/group
+using
+[`systemd-sysusers.service`](https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-sysusers.html)
+or a regular user with
+[`systemd-homed.service`](https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-homed.html).
+
+In strict mode, only uppercase and lowercase characters are allowed, as well as
+digits, underscores and hyphens. The first character may not be a digit or
+hyphen. A size limit is enforced: the minimum of `sysconf(_SC_LOGIN_NAME_MAX)`
+(typically 256 on Linux; rationale: this is how POSIX suggests to detect the
+limit), `UT_NAMESIZE-1` (typically 31 on Linux; rationale: names longer than
+this cannot correctly appear in `utmp`/`wtmp` and create ambiguity with login
+accounting) and `NAME_MAX` (255 on Linux; rationale: user names typically
+appear in directory names, i.e. the home directory), thus MIN(256, 31, 255) =
+31.
+
+Note that these rules are both more strict and more relaxed than all of the
+rules enforced by other systems listed above. A user/group name conforming to
+systemd's strict rules will not necessarily pass a test by the rules enforced
+by these other subsystems.
+
+Written as regular expression the above is: `^[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_-]{0,30}$`
+
+### Relaxed mode
+
+Relaxed user/group name syntax is enforced whenever a systemd component accepts
+and makes use of user/group names registered by other (non-systemd)
+components of the system, for example in
+[`systemd-logind.service`](https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-logind.html).
+
+Relaxed syntax is also enforced by the `User=` setting in service unit files,
+i.e. for system services used for running services. Since these users may be
+registered by a variety of tools relaxed mode is used, but since the primary
+purpose of these users is to run a system service and thus a job for systemd a
+warning is shown if the specified user name does not qualify by the strict
+rules above.
+
+* No embedded NUL bytes (rationale: handling in C must be possible and
+  straightforward)
+
+* No names consisting fully of digits (rationale: avoid confusion with numeric
+  UID/GID specifications)
+
+* Similar, no names consisting of an initial hyphen and otherwise entirely made
+  up of digits (rationale: avoid confusion with negative, numeric UID/GID
+  specifications, e.g. `-1`)
+
+* No strings that do not qualify as valid UTF-8 (rationale: we want to be able
+  to embed these strings in JSON, with permits only valid UTF-8 in its strings;
+  user names using other character sets, such as JIS/Shift-JIS will cause
+  validation errors)
+
+* No control characters (i.e. characters in ASCII range 1…31; rationale: they
+  tend to have special meaning when output on a terminal in other contexts,
+  moreover the newline character — as a specific control character — is used as
+  record separator in `/etc/passwd`, and hence it's crucial to avoid
+  ambiguities here)
+
+* No colon characters (rationale: it is used as field separator in `/etc/passwd`)
+
+* The two strings `.` and `..` are not permitted, as these have special meaning
+  in file system paths, and user names are frequently included in file system
+  paths, in particular for the purpose of home directories.
+
+* Similar, no slashes, as these have special meaning in file system paths
+
+* No leading or trailing white-space is permitted; and hence no user/group names
+  consisting of white-space only either (rationale: this typically indicates
+  parsing errors, and creates confusion since not visible on screen)
+
+Note that these relaxed rules are implied by the strict rules above, i.e. all
+user/group names accepted by the strict rules are also accepted by the relaxed
+rules, but not vice versa.
+
+Note that this relaxed mode does not refuse a couple of very questionable
+syntaxes. For example, it permits a leading or embedded period. A leading period
+is problematic because the matching home directory would typically be hidden
+from the user's/administrator's view. An embedded period is problematic since
+it creates ambiguity in traditional `chown` syntax (which is still accepted
+today) that uses it to separate user and group names in the command's
+parameter: without consulting the user/group databases it is not possible to
+determine if a `chown` invocation would change just the owning user or both the
+owning user and group. It also allows embedding `@` (which is confusing to
+MTAs).
+
+## Common Core
+
+Combining all rules listed above, user/group names that shall be considered
+valid in all systemd contexts and on all Linux systems should match the
+following regular expression (at least according to our understanding):
+
+`^[a-z][a-z0-9-]{0,30}$`