# Auth. users from LDAP with a dot in the UID using PAM?

## EliasP

Hi,

I've been searching and trying around the whole day now and now I'm near to giving up.

I have to authenticate against an LDAP where the UIDs are in the firstname.lastname style.

PAM classifies them as "illegal" and makes it impossible logging in using any of the accounts having a dot in the UID.

Using another account without an dot in its UID works just fine.

When logging in using an "dot-account" I get these messages:

```

Mar  1 19:30:55 amsrvmgmt sshd[9660]: error: PAM: Authentication failure for illegal user elias.probst from e6500.company.local

Mar  1 19:30:55 amsrvmgmt sshd[9660]: Failed keyboard-interactive/pam for invalid user elias.probst from 10.130.0.120 port 58841 ssh2

Mar  1 19:30:55 amsrvmgmt sshd[9665]: pam_tally(sshd:auth): pam_get_uid; no such user

```

When issuing an su - elias.probst the result is:

```

Unknown id: elias.probst

```

I don't see the sense at all why a dot should be illegal. The syntax for chown using a dot as owner.group separator is deprecated since many years. Are there any other technical reasons for this behaviour?

Does anyone know a way how to make PAM accept UIDs containing a dot? Maybe even a patch?

Thanks a lot & best regards,

Elias P.

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