Invalid ticket owner?

[Christopher Nelson]

I saw some code somewhere that noted custom ticket field names can't
start with an underscore so internal to TracPM, I create some derived
fields like "_calc_start" with confidence I can't collide with a
user-created, site-specific custom fields. I'd like to assign an
owner to the pseudotickets I create to represent milestones but need
an invalid owner name so I know I won't have conflicts with a real
user name. Is there any limit on valid Trac ticket owners like their
is on custom field names?


Chris

[Peter Stuge]

Christopher Nelson wrote:
> conflicts with a real user name. Is there any limit on valid Trac
> ticket owners like their is on custom field names?

Somewhat related: All-uppercase user names are PERMISSIONS.


//Peter

[Christopher Nelson]

So "MSOWNER" would never be a valid owner? That could work.

[Peter Stuge]

Well here's the twist, there's nothing *blocking* usernames from
being all-uppercase. It's just that parts of Trac *assume* that any
uppsercase username is a permission.

Sad face.


//Peter

[RjOllos]

On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 9:00:02 AM UTC-7, Peter Stuge wrote:

[...]

Well here's the twist, there's nothing *blocking* usernames from
being all-uppercase. It's just that parts of Trac *assume* that any
uppsercase username is a permission.

That is very unfortunate. At least though, Steffen fixed this in AccountManager very recently, to prevent usernames with all uppercase from registering:

http://trac-hacks.org/changeset/12083

 

[Peter Stuge]

RjOllos wrote:
> > [...]
> > Well here's the twist, there's nothing *blocking* usernames from
> > being all-uppercase. It's just that parts of Trac *assume* that
> > any uppsercase username is a permission.
>
> That is very unfortunate. At least though, Steffen fixed this in
> AccountManager very recently, to prevent usernames with all
> uppercase from registering:
> http://trac-hacks.org/changeset/12083

Sweet indeed. Thanks Steffen!


//Peter

[Christopher Nelson]

Hmmm. Surely a lot of Trac installations are on Linux and use the
system user name as the Trac user ID. In that case,
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/user-name-restrictions-312024/
applies:

User/group names must match [a-z_][a-z0-9_-]*

So just an underscore prefix should be at least fairly safe and
unlikely to collide.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb726984.aspx says you can't use

" / \ [ ] : ; | = , + * ? < >

But we need pipe, equals, and comma in option settings
(owner=foo|bar,status!=closed) and brackets are part of the macro
invocation.

So maybe a colon or semicolon would be safe on Windows and Linux? Or
maybe something really odd like ">specialOwner<"? Do less than and
greater than have some use in Trac I'm not thinking of?

Chris